Saturday, 10 September 2011

Bicycle Trip Around SH Countryside

With a short weekend, why not get on the bicycle and ride around the countryside for the day. 
 
Through a website I'm eager to check out yet another road that bypasses various border checkpoints between Shanghai and Jiangsu province.   I explored the heck out of this area 3 years ago while working at a school over there, i.e. Sino Canada.  Figuring out how to get in and out of Shanghai province was key information as I went there every weekend on a scooter -- the only reliable means of transport as it's in a remote area across provincial borders.  But since scooters were illegal then, and they still are, figuring out how to dodge the checkpoints around border areas was a matter of necessity.
 
It seemed rather obsessive-compulsive to do this every single day at times.  But it was necessary as I slipped up one afternoon.  Out of laziness and not wanting to do the whole effort of plotting routes around checkpoints via farm roads, I took my chances and tried to blow through the border directly on the #318 Hu Qing Ping highway.  That didn't work, I got stopped, and then detained for at least an hour while I of course played the role of being apologetic and giving face to the cops.  Eventually they let me go.
 
On a side topic, Sino Canada used to be the massive site of Frobelland Amusement Park, a project that failed in the 1990s.  There is a ton of mystery behind this project and given the remoteness of the area, I doubt we will ever know what happened at Frobelland, what sorts of demons lurked inside the compound, and what caused it to fail.

http://www.mychinamoto.com/forums/showthread.php?3061-Heads-up-on-the-Huqingping-(Shanghai)&p=33400#post33400

What we do know is that the owner of Sino Canada acquired the land at an excellent (read:  cheap) price and built a Canadian offshore school on it, as well as a massive hotel resort called Zplashes, with a project in mind called Vancouver Resort.  This started in the early 2000s.  So far his 'Vancouver Resort' project of duplicatig a Robson Street behind the hotel has failed to live up to his Lotus-Land visions of how the Chinese see Vancouver in general.  But it is fair to say that the hotel and school are doing successfully and are not failing like the former amusement park did.
 
That being said, the issue of provincial borders and inter-provincial communication in Shanghai hinders any decent transport links and that's probably why the land is so cheap over there.
 
 

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