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 胡乱写，但是原创。。。 |
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DFS
头衔: 海归中尉
加入时间: 2005/05/04
文章: 23
海归分: 5987
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作者：DFS 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
Almost 3 years of working/living experience in Shanghai as an overseas returnee left me mountains of memories. While jogging and combing through my memories and writing them down are not one area of my expertise, I find it intriguing enough for me to give it a try. Here I am going to share some of my personal experiences and perspectives about working and living in Shanghai. (Note: your mileage may vary, reader discretion is advised)
My time commitment cannot be guaranteed, so I will try with a piecemeal approach. Without further ado, let me get to the first part:
Owning a car and driving in Shanghai.
In early 2002, I joined a Shanghai based privately owned IT firm. The company had been around for 8-9 years prior to my engagement. Like many IT and software firms in China, it prospered quite handsomely from increasingly growing demand in late 90s and early 00s. At the time when I started, its revenue had reached ~200m (all currencies herein are in rmb) with more than 200 people.
The company occupies an entire floor in a high-rise business building. From my observation, most companies were exclusively small local firms covering diversified business spectrum from high tech companies in software/IT/network to low tech companies in texture/express delivery/cargo shipping…One would not expect these small business owners be that rich, but I was quite amazed to see many luxurious cars in the parking lot (Mercedes S280/S350, BMW 728/740/5xx, Lexus LS430, Volvo S80, many Audi A6, and etc.)
In my company, a dozen or so people had their own cars. Among these cars, there is a Land cruiser (base price: 69w + license + tax ~= 81w), a BMW530i (base price: 68w + license +tax ~= 82w), a few Buick, a few Honda Accord, and a couple of Santana 2000. I was the only one without a car in the senior management team.
So I took taxi to everywhere. It was quite convenient most of time with one exception - it was difficult to get a cab at Friday nights. Its even worse if it was raining, and absolutely the worst if you behave like a gentleman. Many times I was the first one waiting, but someone else cut me in line as though he/she didn’t even notice I was there. The taxi driver wouldn’t do a damn thing even if he felt sorry for you.
Based on my experience, I rate锦江 the best. Most of the drivers are local and familiar with road. 强生is the next on my list. 巴士 has a bunch of new drivers from 崇明。 Quite often巴士drivers told me that they were new and did not know the directions. During the first few months, it was a frustrating experience whenever that happened since most of time I didn’t know the direction either. It is not easy for these new comers to make a living in Shanghai, that was why I never gave them any hard time and always insisted on paying the full fare even though the actual fare could have been less if they had taken the right route. I didn’t mind giving them a break as long as they were decent and honest. On the other side, I had little tolerance for dishonest drivers. One incident was like this - It was 10 before 11pm, I got out from 新天地. As soon as I got on a taxi, the meter showed 13.00 that was charged based on 30% premium for use after 11pm. The dumb driver left the radio on, so a few minuets later the radio broadcasted the time as “现在北京时间十一点整”. I was pissed off, and told him straight to his face that I was going to report this incident. And I did even before I got off the car. It was a 大众 taxi. 大众 sent me a取款单through postal office for 10x amount of the extra charge, but I never got the time to cash it out. In general, taxi drivers in Shanghai are trustworthy. You can just rely on the driver and relax if you don’t know the direction. I had little to complain about the taxi service in Shanghai after I experienced the taxi service in Beijing (my wife took an expat assignment in Beijing for almost a year while I was working in Shanghai. I had a couple of nightmares about Beijing taxi services, but I will write these separately, provided that I get the time)
BTW, my average taxi bill was a bit over 2000/month (for my personal business, I relied on taxi exclusively before I had my own car. For business, I usually took one of the two company’s minivans. I got reimbursed if I had to take a cab for business). 2000+/month is way less than owing a car.
Initially I did not miss driving at all. The traffic was chaotic and I wasn’t familiar with the road at all. Six months later, I started to miss the fun of being behind the wheel (somehow my wife never had this syndrome).
One day I paid a visit to one of our branch office. This branch office has a team of engineers responsible for all the ATM maintenance work for a major consumer bank. They had a Santana 2000 provided by the company. It was parked outside the office in a small but busy traffic road.
I asked the team lead: “Can I give it a spin?”
He handed the key over to me.
I started to kid him, but with a very serious face: “Come on, sit beside me. You know, in US, most people only drive auto shift, but I have never had a chance to drive a manual. But I guess it will be very similar, right?”
With only a glimpse of hesitation, he jumped in. (In China, people hardly challenge any authorities of their superiors)
Once I was behind the wheel, I felt good. (And of course, I knew how to maneuver a manual transmission. My first car was a small second hand 1986 Dodge Colt, manual transmission, no air condition, not even a radio, when I was a student)
In the meantime, PLMMs in the company often 笑嘻嘻 D asked: “XX，您怎么还没买车呢？你这么有钱。。。没车多没派头呀！。。。跟你身份也不符邪。。。”. Well, in all honesty, I wasn’t sure that I was “that rich”, only God knows. Actually the company would cover all the recurring expanses. One day, when I was in a meeting with my boss, he encouraged me to buy a car and even offered an interest free car loan. The loan was not from his pocket of course, but from the company and would be deducted from my year-end bonus. I just could not resist the temptation any longer.
My sectary did due diligence research on whether I would have any treatment/restriction to buy a car in Shanghai. Well, no preferential treatment whatsoever is given to foreigners. Only overseas returnees meeting certain criteria might be illegible for a special treatment. The only restriction for me is to hold a 外国人居留证.
It might still be a lucrative business for car manufacturers, but not for car dealers anymore. The competitions among dealers were furious, as I was told there were over 3000 car dealers in Shanghai. One guy from行政部 handled everything for me. Here is a list of all the expanses:
Car : 250,000+ （I paid myself）
Purchasing Tax: ~22,000 (I paid myself)
Registration (养路费)： 3000-4000/year (company covered)
Add a 6-cd deck and protective window films: 3500 (I paid myself)
Insurance: 7000-8000/year (company covered)
License plate: 38,500 (I paid myself)
车船税： 320/year (company covered)
Parking (at work): 500-600/mo (company covered)
Parking (at home): 400/mo (I paid myself)
Street parking: Average 200/month (some are company covered if they were for business)
Gas: 400-600/month (company covered) (The gas price was around 3.00/liter at that time)
Car Wash: 40-50/month (I paid myself)
Maint & Repair: ~1000/year (company covered)
Sold it less than 2 year later, just before I left China, for 200,000 including everything.
License plates in Shanghai are acquired through a monthly auction. You don’t need to have a car to be qualified as a bidder. All you need to do is to put down 2000 as honest money. Then you can place you bid through a telephone system, or on-line, or in person at a specified location. You can only place your bid once. If you win the bid at the end of auction, you will have a certain period of time to purchase your license. If you default, you won’t get your honest money back. But if you lose, all you have laid out is a 100 non-refundable registration/processing fee. Once you get your license, you have a max of 3 months to put it on a car. I lost twice, and eventually a 38500 bid got the job done. Most dealers will suffice you a temporary license plate when you pick up your car, and it is non-renewable and only good for 15 days.
So for a couple of months I had been driving my car without a legal license plate. I was stopped once by a police officer and got a ticket for 50 fine for an expired temp license. The restrictions for driving with a temp license plate are: 1)cannot go outside Shanghai, and 2) cannot drive on高架during certain rush tours.
Traffics in general are horrible in all major cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou. Driving in Shanghai is much more difficult than in other major cities. A few key contributing factors are: 1)way too many bicycles 2) narrow lanes, 3) too many confusing road restrictions such as one way, no left and/or right turn, multiple splits, and etc. and 4) multiple names are all associated with a single street, such as 长宁路－》长寿路－》天目西路－》海宁路－》周家嘴路。You are easily going to get totally lost if you are not familiar with the roads. Road condition in浦东is much better that of in浦西。
In my early 20s, I sometime could be obnoxious when driving. When I grew older, I tended to just take it easy and follow the traffic flow whenever I was in the driver seat. When I was driving in Shanghai, I got aggravated easily. Many drivers were inconsiderate to others, while a good portion of the rest were suffering from a severe case of rectal/cerebral inversion when they were on road. It came across to me almost on daily bases that some vehicle cut and blocked you off only waiting to change to another lane. Too many vehicles on the streets should not take all the blames for such horrible traffics. In my personal view, driving without abiding by any rules might just be the paramount reason. Just look my worst record: It took me an hour and forty minutes to drive less than 8 km (yep, < 5 miles) from home to work one day morning. No kidding. Not before long, I was trained to be an aggressive driver. – 海龟不得不本土化。
One incident worth mentioning here is: one night I was just off the 延安路高架 and heading back home on江苏路, a reckless taxi suddenly cut me off without any signaling/warning. I had to make my way by a dramatic blindness lane change just to avoid colliding with this taxi. I could have been killed…I was infuriated immediately and drove pass the taxi and stopped in front of it. My head was so freaking hot that all I wanted was to throw something to the cab. But all I could find is a dollar coin in my trouser pocket, so I threw it to the cab. The cab driver was trying to say something, but I could not calm myself down to listen a word. He opened his door as I was walking towards him. But before he could get out, I pushed his head back to his seat, and slammed the door. My two cents: if you cannot control your anxiety, stress, antagonism, or discontent while behind the wheel, you would be better off with riding taxies. Driving conditions in Shanghai is so easy to prompt your frustration to build up to road rage.
Driving on highways is not as easy as many, who are used to cruise, may assume. I drove to Hangzhou once a while for fun. The interstate highway itself is (well, almost) impeccable. The problem lies in that people drive at ridiculously varying speeds, from less than 30 km/h to more than 180 km/h. The situation could be much more serious during the night. There were a few times that I spotted some taillights far ahead of me. Since they were far ahead, nothing triggered me to slow down. But with a blink of seconds, my car was almost at the tailgate of an overloaded truck moving at a slooooooow speed. After a couple of dread experiences, I always stayed alert throughout the drive.
Fender-bender and whose fault? -- We commonly joke about that there are two things are certain in life. Well, I am gonna add the 3rd one. I guarantee you that sooner or later you will have some fender-bender experience when driving in ever crowded Shanghai streets. One morning I was driving on海南路(A tiny street with an extraordinary amount of traffics. 虹口区政府，检察院，纪委，等不下20部门were all located on this street). At one point, I had to stop my car waiting for incoming traffic to be cleared before I could get through. Suddenly a mid age上海人riding a bicycle bumped to my car leaving a deep scratch from back to all the way front. Later I found out his bicycle breaks didn’t work, and that caused him to hit my car. The funny part was that he told me bluntly that he had no money to pay for my damage. I called 110. A couple minutes later a police came and asked us about how this incident had happened. When the police asked him how he would like to pay for the damage, this guy still insisted on having no money even after the officer suggested him to pay 100 as意思意思. At that point, the officer threatened him to take him in. Nothing like this would I expect as this guy started向我作揖(Sigh…money weights more than ones dignity)。我心肠一软，told him just be careful next time and get his breaks fixed. Just when I was about to leave, the police officer handed over a traffic report to me. I was perplexed by the report indicating that I was 100% fault. So, I questioned the police officer “Should it be 100% his fault rather than mine?” The police officer smiled at me and replied: “Well, if the report says it is 100% his fault, then you are out of luck. But if it is 100% your fault, you can ask your insurance company to cover the damage. You are a decent man, so that is why I wrote this way.” -- 人性化的上海警察。 The cost for bodywork differs considerably depending on whether the car is domestically manufactured or imported. One of my colleague’s then brand new BMW 530i got a long scratch on its front hood (apparently some devil did it on purpose) when it was parked in front of his mother-in-law’s apartment complex. It cost over 9000 to fix. It probably would have cost less than one tenth of that amount if it were domestically manufactured. - TNND. Body shops normally keep an amazing level of efficiency. If you drop your car before noon, the chances are that you may pick it up the next day for most dent and paint jobs. Dents are fixed with hammers by skilled trades. And works done by these skilled trades in respectable shops are awesome.
Well, enough for today. Will share more if I deem there is a level of interest.
签名：
You说脱眉头, I说拖码头
You说倚着，I 说爱着
作者：DFS 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 胡乱写，但是原创。。。 -- DFS - (14594 Byte) 2005-8-23 周二, 02:52 (2026 reads) - 不错，继续继续。。。 -- 寒夜 - (11 Byte) 2005-8-23 周二, 04:23 (252 reads)
- 顶, 同感. -- 疑似公民 - (0 Byte) 2005-8-23 周二, 03:02 (249 reads)
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