[Non-Fiction] The Shanghai Girl

[Runesmith]

This is another account of my adventures while on business travel.

Recently I was in Shanghai, attending a business meeting at our subsidiary there. This was a three day affair, filled with annoying meetings and boring workshops.

When I fly to Asia or to the US, I fly in one day earlier so that I have a chance to get over the jet lag. So I reached Shanghai on a Saturday night, and I had the whole of Sunday to recover from the flight.

So I went to the Shanghai Bund, walked around for a while enjoying the scenery along the bank of the HuangPu river and decided to head to Nanjing Road - the main shopping area of Shanghai.

I walked in to Plaza 353, an enormous shopping mall right at the start of the pedestrian street. I walked around aimlessly, looking in to the shops, when I saw these two young girls standing in front of a coffee bar.

One of them was very pretty, dressed elegently, and sporting an engagement ring on her finger, and her friend was dressed quite casually, nerdy looking, with glasses. Well, I had time to kill, and nothing lined up for the day, so I decided to try a new pick up trick I had thought up.

Most taxi drivers in big Chinese cities hardly speak any English. So the hotels give out address cards to foreigners so that they can show the card to the taxi driver when they want to be brought back to the hotel.

So I walked up to the girls, and asked if they spoke English. Like most of the young people in Shanghai, they did. So I told them that I had lost the address card to my hotel, and whether they could write down the address of Pullman Shanghai South for me.

The nerdy girl immediately did a search on her phone and found the address. Then she asked me if I had a piece of paper and a pen. I pretended that I didn't and asked her whether she could transfer the location to me on WeChat.

WeChat is the second most popular instant messenger in China, made by the same company that makes the most popular one (called QQ). Unlike QQ, WeChat is available in English as well, so foreigners who travel to China use WeChat. A lot of English speaking Chinese also use WeChat.

I opened up my WeChat barcode and she scanned it with her phone, adding me. Then she sent me the location. So now I had her as a WeChat contact.

I bought the girls coffee to thank them for helping me. I chatted up the nerdy girl (the fact that she had WeChat intrigued me, because WeChat is used also as a "hook up" method for Chinese girls looking for a ONS with a foreigner).

The nerdy girl (let's call her "Amy"), was 26 and was out with her friend, who was shopping for her upcoming wedding. They had already done the important stuff like the wedding dress and the bridal dresses, and were looking for table decors etc. Amy had no boyfriend, and looked quite shy when she answered that question.

We parted ways after about an hour, and as soon as I got in to a Taxi, I messaged Amy.

To be continued...