---
type: Person
title: Jim
description: Bookable Shanghai guide who takes Harry round the marriage market and supplies most of the hard information about modern China — EV adoption, the three-child policy, and who actually joins the Communist Party.
tags: [china, shanghai, guide]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
---

# Jim

A Shanghai tour guide, bookable through the GetYourGuide link Harry publishes in
the description and thanks by name on camera at the end of the day.

He is the reason the [Shanghai](/places/shanghai.md) video has any substance
beyond impressions. Almost every fact on the [China](/countries/china.md) page
from that trip comes from him, and he volunteers rather than recites:

- How the **marriage market** works, including that the brokers take a
  commission scaled to how eager the parent is, and that a foreigner counts as a
  rare candidate rather than an impossible one.
- **Electric vehicles** at around 40% of usage, why Teslas are cheapest in the
  world here, and how to read the number plates — green for electric, blue for
  petrol.
- That the **one-child policy is now a three-child policy**, in response to
  population decline.
- That **Communist Party membership is hard to get** and covers around 97
  million people — under 10% of the country.
- On **being gay in China**: manageable in Shanghai and among the young, very
  hard in a small city and with family.

The most valuable thing he says is the least flattering, and he says it about
his own country: many Chinese are becoming more nationalistic, access to outside
information is limited, and where state media is the only perspective available
people are easily misled. He is equally direct that the surveillance is a trade
people accept — his and other locals' argument being that a woman can walk
anywhere at any hour because crime is near zero.

## Appears in

- [I Ignored the Media and Visited China 🇨🇳](/videos/K3X46veg64I.md) — guides
  the whole day in Shanghai.