Trouble at the Provincial Border

It goes without saying that every time I ride a scooter to or from Sino Canada, things get dramatic.  I seldom go out there anymore, but when I do, I'm continually reminded and baffled as to how I managed this particular run over 100 times back and forth when teaching at that school from 2008-09.   Talk about adventure.

  

It turns out that Sino Canada is a BC offshore school, very similar to where I'm currently teaching  (Nanyang Model School in downtown Shanghai).  Yet conversations with teachers over at Sino are once again making me jealous of the holiday schedule they enjoy and we don't.  Such as 2 weeks for Christmas break and 3.5 weeks for Chinese New Year.   We don't get even close to that.   Oh, and who can forget Friday 11am dismissals which they get and of course we don't.

 

So there are times, such as now, when I'm tempted to go back to working at Sino since they have the 2 week Christmas holiday which might even make it possible to head to Vancouver Canada and spend it there.  Imagine that.

 

Even so, the drama involved in commuting to or from that location is a little bit much.  Regretably, it detracts from the major relaxed schedule that a teacher could certainly enjoy over there.  3 years after the fact, nothing has improved with the transport situation, and it's actually gotten worse!   As usual, you need a scooter or a motorbike to do this, and making the occasional trip out there is a humbling experience.

 

The key difficulty is the provincial border checkpoints between Shanghai and Jiangsu provinces.  Public transit doesn't go through the border, and the police are ruthless in stopping bikes and scooters that go through as the traffic is very, very sparse in general.    There are two checkpoints, both active now, and I often avoid them by taking backroads which I'm quite familiar with.  But yesterday I had no choice.   It takes nearly a half tank of gas to scoot this run from Shanghai, and gas stations are sparse in the area.  With the fuel levels low on my scooter, I was hoping to get gas at the local station but it was closed, already, at 7:30pm.  

 

Moving on, I ran out of gas about 2km from the provincial border.  No choice but to get off, walk, and push.  Of course, the cops stopped me at the checkpoint, but I played the fool and pointed to the empty gas gauge.   It worked.