After I bought my car, a car license became a must. There are two choices for me: 1. A Shanghai Car License, which can be got from a complex auction system 2. A non-Shanghai car license, but it is restricted from most downtown highway on weekdays. Like most people, I got a non-Shanghai car license first since I usually commute to work by subway, so in weekends I still can drive. At the same time, my goal is to get a Shanghai Car License in case in the future I need to drive to work, and it looks like it is getting more and more difficult to get one as this giant city is overflowed with cars.
Unlike in HongKong enough money can buy a license, in Beijing the license is distributed through a lottery system, in Shanghai the license is given through an internet auction every month. Because the highest bid price is limited to lower than 90,000RMB (about 13,000USD) and the price increases throughout the auction process so the auction is more like a puzzle game: to guess how fast the highest bid price increase and make sure your offer hit the number at the right time. Even after doing the good math to hit the right price, usually there are more correct offers than the number of licences available, so being lucky is necessary, too.
There are a lot of manuals on the web to teach you how to do the trick, start from beginning I read most of them, thought I master all the tricks, and even I did the mock up test many times.
当我买车以后，上车牌就成了一件迫在眉睫的事。在上海如果要上沪牌，就得参加拍牌才行。如果上个外地牌呢，中环内环工作日基本都不让跑。好在目前我上班不开车坐地铁，只需要周末开开车，就先上了个外地牌先开着车，等我慢慢拍中了沪牌再换也来得及。越早能拿到牌当然就心定了，现在上海的车多到溢出来，谁知道什么时候就限制上牌或者像北京一样进一步限制外牌，所以拍牌这件事，还得赶紧的。
据说香港上牌是给钱就行，北京纯看运气摇号，上海拍牌还挺不简单，得每个月参加一次互联网拍卖。这个拍卖并不是价高者得，而是把最高价限制在了9万以内，中标价随着拍卖过程的推移以越来越快的速度不断增加。所以简单地说就是要猜在某个时间节点的价格是什么然后提前出价。即使价格出对了，也有可能因为同时有超过限额的正确出价，能不能被系统接收还要看运气。总之，是一场考验网速脑速手速外加运气的大型考试。
网上怎么拍牌的攻略很多，所以还没开始拍之前我就潜心学习，还做了很多次模拟拍牌，花了不少时间。
Check how the manuals look like:
攻略长这样，不花点时间真的搞不明白
And the mock up auction system(very helpful because the bid process only last about 30 seconds... every second counts!)
第三方提供的模拟系统，毕竟每个月就一回，每次最关键的只有30秒，不练习一下很容易就出错
I thought I was well prepared and can get my license in a short time, but after almost a year, I am still working on it every month, same as 270,000 same hardworking rivals, to compete for the only 10,000 license quota every month. Unfortunately, the degree of difficulty is even increasing as there are more people entering the pool. Wish me good luck and can share my success soon:)
开始我以为好好准备应该很快就能拍到牌，结果都快一年了跟另外那27万人一样每个月的拍牌已经成为生活中固定的一部分，都为了那珍贵的一万张牌限额而努力。而且好像会越来越难因为这个人数还在不断增加。。。希望接下来能幸运地拍中然后及时来向各位汇报我的成功经验：）