Shanghai

China’s showcase megacity of some 25 million people. The Bund riverfront is the classic hangout, facing the futuristic skyline across the river — reached through a tunnel — where the Oriental Pearl TV Tower offers glass-floor views that finally make the city’s scale visible. Young Shanghai skews single and social; the Bund crawls with TikTokers and livestreamers running multi-phone rigs.

What Harry did

Harry spent a day here on a rented date with a local: walking the Bund, eating street food (his best jianbing yet), browsing a New York-feeling Christmas market, going up the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and coaxing his height-scared companion onto the glass floor, meeting subscribers who recognised him, and visiting a famous, immaculately kept classical Chinese garden.

Practical facts

• Oriental Pearl TV Tower entry: $56 (from video – unverified), with an extra charge for the highest viewpoint, which Harry skipped.
• Payments are effectively Alipay-only — foreign bank cards barely work (see China).
• Police are friendly, and the city feels safe and low-crime.
• Popular spots (the tower, the garden) get very crowded on weekends.

Arriving

• The maglev from the airport runs at 270 mph and covers the trip in eight minutes — the fastest airport transfer Harry has done, and his introduction to the argument that China’s infrastructure is simply ahead of everyone’s.
• A six-day transit visa is available on arrival, which is what the trip runs on.
• Western apps are blocked — Google Maps and social media included — so without Mandarin you are improvising unless you have a guide.

The marriage market

Parents and grandparents gather in a park to find partners for their adult children, who mostly aren’t there. Details, from Jim:

• The advertisements list attributes — age, height, weight, job, income — laid out on the ground and on boards.
• Brokers work the crowd and take a commission if a marriage results, scaled to how eager the parent is.
• Locals generally want locals, but a foreigner counts as a rare candidate rather than a hopeless one.

Harry tried, and was turned down repeatedly and immediately. He records the rejections rather than editing around them.

Surveillance

Cameras in clusters — Harry counts eight or nine on a single pole, then five on the next — and police on every street. His own reaction is that it doesn’t bother him because he isn’t doing anything wrong, and he notes that this would read very differently in the West.

The part he says nobody covers: asked directly, locals are fine with it, and their reason is specific rather than resigned. Crime is close to zero, and you can walk anywhere at any hour, male or female, day or night. He treats that as a genuine trade rather than a talking point.

Food

• A neighbourhood noodle place, packed and entirely local, which is how he chooses it. Noodles and a deep-fried pork cutlet, dressed — unexpectedly — with Worcestershire sauce, which turns out to be a real Shanghai influence.
• Slurping is the compliment, as in Japan.
• Roast duck, which he calls the best duck he has ever eaten. Bought from a takeaway and eaten with beer.
• Ginger and brown sugar tea, strong and sweet.
• On the dog-eating stereotype, a local’s answer, recorded because it is a better answer than the question: 1.4 billion people eat many things, some people in many countries have eaten dogs in famine, and in Shanghai people dote on their dogs.

Massage

A full-body Chinese massage where the therapists work from overhead handrails and walk on you — Harry’s description is a human treadmill. Fast, extremely practised, and done without oils or pills on the principle that the body is sorted out by working the body. 260 for the pair, and neither of them knew the word for “softer”.

Things Jim explains

• Electric vehicles are about 40% of usage, and Teslas are cheapest in the world here because the factory is outside the city. Green number plates are electric, blue are petrol.
• The one-child policy is now a three-child policy, after the population slowed.
• The Communist Party is hard to join — around 97 million members, under 10% of the country. The party was founded in Shanghai, and the site draws Chinese tourists; filming inside is not allowed.
• Shanghai is young by Chinese standards, roughly 250 years old.
• Handshakes are soft. A firm grip reads as strange; a handshake here can seal an agreement without paperwork.
• Western brands are aspirational, not resented — queues round the corner for a New York bagel shop, and a middle class Jim describes as deliberately looking for a new identity.

The fake market

The place to buy factory-made copies. Harry’s negotiation is instructive because the seller opens by claiming she is already giving him the local price — 250 for everyone else, 180 for him — then moves up to 250 when pushed. He names the tactic, walks toward the door, and buys at 100 yuan, about $14.

Jing’an Temple

A Buddhist temple among the skyscrapers. The thing everyone does is throw coins into a central bowl for a wish. Harry’s figures for the country’s religious makeup, given here: roughly a third agnostic or atheist, 16% Buddhist, 7% Christian, 1.7% Muslim.

Harry’s tips

• Do one high viewpoint — from street level you can’t grasp the city’s size; the standard tower level is enough, skip the top-tier upsell.
• Eat the street food; the jianbing (savoury crepe) is a must.
• Cross under the river to see both faces of the city: the historic Bund and the new skyline side.
• Take the maglev in from the airport. Eight minutes, and it sets the tone.
• Eat where the room is full and entirely Chinese, not where the menu has English.
• Get a guide. With the Western internet blocked and no Mandarin, Harry’s day works because Jim is running it.
• Walk away in the fake market. The price moved from 250 to 100 the moment he did.

Source

• I Rented a Chinese Girlfriend in Shanghai 🇨🇳 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VzMQYqcZKs
• I Ignored the Media and Visited China 🇨🇳 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3X46veg64I