Cruisin' China

So this is a pic of my current pimpin' ride, a Junlu mountain bike. It looks cool and was only 300 Yuan (~$45). It has the special shock absorber which is nice, but of course it's made in China so in the 5 weeks I've had it, it has seen the repair shop 6 times. The pedals both broke off within 2 weeks and had to be replaced, it is now only a 1 speed bike instead of the original 18 speeds because it just won't change gears, the seat had to be replaced, one tire started doing such bad figure 8's that it would no longer spin through the mud catcher thingie, the squeaking got extremely annoying, the chain is now completely rusted, etc. But anyway, I went today looking for scooters and am considering either buying a gas powered scooter or a motorcycle. The prices are rather reasonable--scooters are between 2000-3000 yuan and very nice motorcycles are 4000 (~$550). Some issues I have run into, to drive gas powered vehicles you must get a license plate and have a driver's license. As for the license plate, the way that China is trying to help the environment is by putting in effect a law 3 months ago which states that no one can get any new license plates for an indefinite period of time. The only way to get a license plate is to buy a very old scooter/motorcycle that has a plate and you can use that one. However, I asked the scooter salesman if there is another way and he said of course, the store 2 doors down sells fake license plates for only 10 yuan and I can have any number I like. Problem solved! Regarding the driver's license, a foreigner can only get a driver's license after being in China for at least 1 year. To deal with this annoyance, there are 2 methods. The shop across town sells nice looking fake driver's licenses for 100 yuan but that's not a good idea because fake government identifications can get you in trouble, so he recommends I take the second method. If I see a policeman, either act calm and drive normally and he probably won't notice me in a sea of other scooters (80% of which also have no driver's license and a fake license plate) or try to get away from him which is not hard to do because the police never go very fast because they don't want to endanger the public by chasing someone very fast (an eminently reasonable idea that perhaps should be exported to the U.S.) so I can definitely outrun him. If somehow neither of these ideas works out, then it's still not a problem because then I can just speak English to the cop and he will realize I don't understand anything and just let me go. At absolute worst, there is a 300 yuan fine for having a fake or no license plate and a 300 yuan fine for no driver's license, but usually you can just give the cop 100 yuan cash on the spot to avoid these troubles, but foreigners are almost always let go for free for any violation because the paperwork is very annoying for the police to deal with, plus the foreigner will usually not pay the fine since for some reason (hmm) foreigners never figure out the right place to pay it, and moreover the policeman will lose face for having made China look unfriendly to foreigners.