[shibby]

There's a serious lack of info here on this incredible city.


The lowdown
China is quickly becoming ‘the place to be’ in the international community due to it’s sudden emergence in the global economy. As a result you will find the major cities such as Shanghai flooded with foreigners chasing the Chinese version of “The American Dream”. Universities are overflowing with foreign adults desperately trying to learn Mandarin and young white people are lapping up the ESL demand for a ballooning Chinese middle class hysterical about learning English. While much of the country remains untarnished, Shanghai (SH) is quickly becoming a product of extreme westernization, with restaurant menus, roadsigns and advertisements being displayed in both English and Chinese. Starbucks and McDonalds inhabit much of the prime real estate, and the likes of Pizza Hut, Burger King, Dairy Queen and Dunkin Donuts are not too far behind. Much of the city still manages to retain it's oriental charm, however: there is no shortage of good, cheap Chinese shops and restaurants mixed in with their Western counterparts.
It's ever growing multicultural population has Shanghai being coined "The New Manhattan". Lots of Africans, lots of Europeans, lots of Thai's, lots of Koreans and Japanese, lots of Latin Americans. I've never been in a city with so many people from literally every single corner of the world. Much, much more multicultural than Hong Kong. Anyway, I've never been to Manhattan so I don't know about appropriateness of the nickname.

Where to stay
Shanghai is so enormous and there are far too many possibilities here. You can find yourself a decent apartment outside the centre with hot water, kitchen, fridge etc from 2,000RMB ($320) a month. 3,000RMB ($480) will get you something decent closer to the central area. If you're sharing, it's not hard to find a nice 3 bedroom place for around 5,000-6,000RMB ($800-$950) per month.
The public transportation system is fantastic, probably the best I've ever seen. This means where you stay is not a gamebreaker. It's very easy to get around. The bus costs between 1 and 3 RMB ($0.30) but you will probably never use it. The metro system costs a maximum of 5 RMB ($0.80) and will get you anywhere in the city. There are 11 lines I believe, and they all criss cross over each other several times, so it's easy to change lines to get to where you want to go. Download the SH Metro app so you have the map handy at all times. Once you've been on the metro once or twice, you'll know exactly how to use it. It's very simple.
So on that note, my advice would be to stay somewhere near the middle of Line 1 and/or Line 2. This will put you close to the main central areas of West Nanjing Road, East Nanjing Road, Jing'an Temple, Xintiandi, People's Square. This is a great central location for you to get anywhere in the city, as well as very easy for girls to find if you ask them to come meet you. Here's a copy of the map. The area I talk about is right in the middle.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...map_en.svg

Locking down an actual place is a little tougher. There are many real estate agents with apartments for rent. The problem is many of them ask for at least a 6 month contract and at least a month as bond, if not more. If you are planning on being in the country for a while, this is fine. But if only for a month or less, it's hard to get around this. In this case a serviced hotel/apartment is probably your best bet. On my most recent trip I stayed at Xuhui Executive Suites in Xuhui and paid around $50 a night. This place is baller, walk in closet, gym, executive desk and chair, sick mini car, big bathroom with tub and toiletries, massive bed, massive tv. They were also cool with me bringing a girl back to the room. I got a few funny looks from the desk, but that's maybe because she was black.
You'll be able to find cheaper than this. There's alot of good hotels in Shanghai. Hit up Agoda/Expedia/Booking.com and just surf around. You should find something.

Language

In my opinion Chinese is an easy enough language to learn to speak but a very difficult language to learn how to read and write.

It is a tonal language and character based which makes it a very difficult language to self study compared with something like Spanish. To get any real command of the language you will need a teacher, in my opinion.

A typical intensive Spanish language course requires approximately 6-8 months to reach fluency, whereas a typical Chinese intensive course at a top university requires 2.5-3 years (5 semesters). That is the difference.

However much of that time is required due to the immense amount of time needed to memorize how to read and write some 4,000 unique Chinese characters. Take this out of the equation and in my opinion you can become fluent in SPEAKING Chinese in less than a year.

As for English, in Shanghai it is generally spoken reasonably well by university students, staff at western restaurants, e.g. McDonalds or foreign owned restaurants and by much of the younger generation. Some shopgirls and waitresses from smaller cities won't speak much at all. I didn't meet any local Chinese that were fluent in English. A lot of girls in clubs won't understand any English either. This surprised me, with SH being such an international city and so much English around the place.

Taxis
Cheap, and you might have an issue with some of them driving you around the block a few times to run up the meter but in my experience it was not a problem (definitely not as bad as in SEA).
Taxis are inexpensive and a 20 minute drive might only cost you around 40RMB ($7). There is a rush hour in Shanghai at the expected time (7-8am and 5-7pm) and at this hour I would advise using the Metro instead. There's no traffic jam on the Metro obviously, but also remember at this time the Metro is bit of a zoo. I'd prefer crowded trains than sitting my ass in traffic with a taxi meter running, though.


Cellphone
I use China Mobile, and it is reliable enough. There is no 3G as far as I know, but Edge here is quite fast it seems. I suggest going to a China Mobile store to buy your sim card and set all your shit up, rather than buying the sim pack from a guy on the street. To get internet access they need to register you and ring up and set you up on some package etc. From memory I paid 25RMB ($4) monthly for 150MB. At home I use wifi.
Trust me, you will need internet, because you will want to use WeChat.

WeChat
WeChat, also known as WeiXin to the local people, is an Android and iphone app that is very similar to Whatsapp. Girls will be more receptive to giving you their Weixin ID than to giving you their number. If you're a foreigner they will probably get excited with the fact that you even have Weixin.
But the real quirk of having this app is not keeping in touch with the girls you meet, it's the other functions it has.

Look Around: The Look Around function works like this: You open it and set your filters. Naturally you select "female only"
The app will then "look around" you for females with Weixin and report back to you all the females in that are near you, and their distance. Sound stalkerish? Yes, it's fucking stalkerish. That's why I don't use it. But heaps of guys I know do, especially white guys, and heaps of htem pull a fair number of chicks from it, especially drunk horny chicks at 2am on a Saturday night. Here's what it looks like:



My friends and I sometimes play "Find the 100m girl" when we're sitting at a bar or restaurant. Fun times.

So how does this usually work? You come out of the bar piss drunk at 2am. Didn't pull anyone. You bust out your phone and open WeChat and "Look Around". Boom. Heaps of girls. Check out my screenshot, you see that Ann Nguyen girl, within 100m? She's probably Vietnamese but whatever. Her status is "I'm very sad". Click on her name and send her any cheeseball message you want. "Why are you sad? You should be happy because you're pretty!" Keep in mind, she may not speak English, so keep it simple. Cocky game also does not fly so well here. She'll probably message you back, maybe no one loves her, maybe her bf broke up with her, maybe she failed an exam or some other bullshit thing. Tell her you'll cheer her up and buy her a drink. And she can make some new friends tonight. If you're foreign, even better. Milk that. Bullshit some more and then ask her to come meet you. She's 100m away, remember? I'm no expert at this Weixin thing but I see it get done too often and it blows my mind every time. Half the game is in your avatar pic. Put a white face there with a nice smile and you'll get a lot of bites.

Shake: The other function is Shake. You shake your phone, and then the app will find other females near you that are shaking their phone at the same time. This supposedly means you are looking to make new "friends". I've chatted to a few girls using this, but never met up with any. Here's what is looks like:




Once you've found a shaker that's not too far away and not too ugly, adopt the same approach you used with Look Around. Or invent your own WeChat game. Haha, fucking WeChat. Cracks me up every time.

The socially awkward dating age community in China thrives on this thing. I have never met a single Chinese person who does not have this app.

It's not exclusive to China. Just to try it out, you should download it right now (it's free) and try these functions out. I'm almost certain, unless you're in Burundi or something, you'll find some Chinese girl in your area "shaking their phone" or "looking around". Have fun.


Nightlife

G+ – Located in Xintiandi area. G+ is a nightclub within a mall that can get uncomfortably crowded on Friday and Saturday nights. Often brings in guest DJs to really get the party rockin. Normally a good mix of tourists, expats and locals all boozing the night away. At the entrance ask for the 100 kuai open bar. It’s available but it’s not advertised. Beware, the alcohol quality is terrible – prepare for the hangover from hell. However one thing’s for certain – the dancefloor at G+ has always got some talent creeping around.

M2 (Muse 2) – Near Xintiandi. Often uncomfortably crowded, this joint has more of a local crowd but has some foreigners here and there. The music is generally OK, but drinks are a little pricier and it doesn’t have the same "let's get fucked up" atmosphere as a place like G+, many girls here are dolled up and sitting around at tables with their rich kid boyfriend. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t single ladies around though! Dancefloor is where you’ll find em. I’ve known a few guys to encounter p4p here. You can also check out Muse on the Bund, which is similar.

Phebe - Hengshan Road. A lot of P4P hangin’ around this place, a fair share of African ones too. I even remember seeing a dorky rich dude sitting at a table, a hostess walks in with a group of about 6 girls, all at least 8s, lines them up in front of him, he sits and ponders for about 30 seconds before he points at one in a yellow dress who sits down next to him before all the others walk off. No shame. With that said, Phebe can be a lot of fun. There’s plenty of single girls around, and the music is killer. Filter out the P4P and have a good time. Phebe is on Hengshan Road which is littered with nightclubs, so it’s a good spot to start your night.

Zapatas - Not far from Phebe, Zapatas is a club filled with 80% foreigners. Free beer on Mondays from 10pm – 11pm. Good music. A little tacky, but can be fun. Has a backpacker feel to it some nights. There is an outdoor bar right outside where people from the club sit around and chill/smoke. A good place to make friends/chat up girls. There’s ladders at the side of the bar for girls to climb up and dance. Stand back and have a good laugh at some drunk girls (and guys) make fools of themselves.

M1NT - Bund area. Probably Shanghai’s most famous nightclub, M1NT is filled to the brim with rich expats, rich tourists and rich locals. It’s not ridiculously exclusive, just add yourself to the guestlist on their website beforehand and you should have no trouble getting in. If you're not on the list, find a couple of girls to go with they'll let you in, especially if you're foreign. Dress nice. Coat check is free. Drinks are expensive, bring a few stacks. This is where the rich and famous hang out in Shanghai. Kobe Bryant, Paris Hilton, Dwyane Wade etc have been spotted here recently, complete with their posse and handful of bodyguards. The word is, when a celebrity is in town, they party at M1NT. Music’s good, people are beautiful (if not a little snobby), and money is being thrown around like tissue paper. Getting yourself a table will cost you a couple hundred on a weekday at least. Models dance on the bar and sharks swim around in the tanks behind you. Often your fair share of Chinese girls looking for rich white dick are crawling around too (and not P4P either).

Rich Baby (formerly Babyface) - Can't remember exactly where, but walking distance from M2 and G+. A massive nightclub largely populated by young locals who speak no English, Rich Baby is a famous Shanghai nightclub that is booming every weekend, no exceptions. It’s not surprising to find foreigners here, but by and large this club attracts the local crowd. The two big dance floors are often bustling with pretty Chinese girls, although finding one that is DTF, especially with a foreigner, is more of a challenge. Splash out and buy a table and your status skyrockets; girls love being taken back to a table to drink. And they LOVE getting taken back to a table of white people. In my experience anyway. The music is pretty good, too.

Cuvvae - A clean, modern nightclub on the Bund with decent music but not much of a party atmosphere. Drinks are good but expensive. Often attracts the expat crowd. It is worth checking out. Most memorable part was the big black bouncer with a cool haircut.

Bar Rouge - Boring French nightclub with a snobby crowd. Overpriced. Has cover charge. Avoid.

The Geisha - Hit up Geisha on ladies night (Wednesday) for a good time. Ladies drink free until midnight, and the crowd is a nice mix of sophisticated locals and young expats. Never overcrowded and the music is just loud enough so that you can hear yourself speak without screaming and losing your voice. Enjoy the club/bar downstairs or head up to the terrace/lounge upstairs and mingle. Note that on Ladies Night this place does feel rather empty until 1am. But on Fri/Sat its crowded just like any other club. The upstairs lounge part is the PERFECT place to bounce a date to from the dancefloor downstairs. Even has a seperate bar up there, with a sick cocktail menu and lots of wait staff so you don't even have to get up. Also in the lounge the music is much quieter so you can talk very comfortably and escalate. Pulled off my never kissed a white girl line up here quite a few times. The music is excellent, the drinks are excellent, the crowd is excellent. Can get rowdy on the weekends, though. 'The Apartment' is another club with a similar setup, but doesn’t have the same appeal. Not to me, anyway.

Windows Basement - Tired of the expensive, flash, snobby nightclubs? Hit up Windows Basement, a bar/nightclub/disco/late night food joint/little bit of everything. Seems to attract a lot of Koreans and Africans (weird combo, I know). Windows Basement plays a fantastic mix of reggae and old school hip hop beats, with a little bit of the new school thrown in. Lots of cute girls, lots of good, cheap drinks, lots of space, and open until the wee hours of the morning. Always a good time, and exponentially better than the other late night option (which is Hollywoods – an expat shithole, basically).

IFC - Hit up the IFC (International Financial Centre, I think) on Wednesday night (Ladies night). It’s full of young office ladies and upper class girls drinking on free Moet Chandon! It's up on the 97th floor, costs you 100 yuan ($15) to get in, but take some girls with you and you can get them to bring you their free drinks It’s in the big building that’s nicknamed the bottle opener, since that’s what it looks like. Shouldn't be hard to find, you can see it from miles away. Very cool place to kick it on a Wednesday night.

Park 97 - Not a good place to creep. Too much sitting down and drinking. Tiny little dancefloor. It's in Fuxing Park, which I never spent much time at. There's other clubs around there, and I've set foot in most of them, but it's not my kind of place.

Mooks - Also a sit down in groups and drink place. Cool if you have a group of guys and girls and want to chill out and work on your date. Not a good place to roll solo and try and pickup.

Eden - Similar to Mooks, but not as many tables. It's just one floor below Mooks. Or above. Can't remember, but same building anyway. You can roll solo here, but I wouldn't recommend it. MUCH better venues for doing that (G+, M1NT, Geisha etc)

Helen's - This is a university pub quite far out of the centre. It is however filled every Friday night with Fudan University language students getting absolutely wasted on buckets of redbull vodka, whiskey cola, or cheap beers. If you are in your 20's or can act like you're in your 20's and pretend to be a language student, I would check this out at least once. It's a flaggers paradise. Every nationality you can think of. Nigerian, Zambian, Korean, American, Japanese, Costa Rican, all rich kids that have been sent to China to learn Mandarin but spend their time pissing all their money away instead. Good times.

Perry's - This is basically another Helen's but it's near Jiaotong and Donghua universities instead. Exactly the same deal. And closer to the centre.

There are too many nightspots to list on here. Shanghai has so many. These are the ones I know and can vouch for. Perhaps someone else that frequents different clubs in SH can add to this list.

Nightlife tip 1: When you go to a club, TRY TO GET FRIENDLY WITH ONE OF THE WHITE GUY PROMOTERS. Or become friends with a friend of one. Just be friends with one. These guys, typically a 21 year old white male, are targeted for promotion jobs in Shanghai. Clubs hire a young, good looking white guy to suit up every Friday and Saturday and bring as many people as possible to the club. If they bring in 15 before midnight, they get paid x amount. If they bring in 20, paid more. 25, paid more. You get the idea. Half need to be girls. The idea of a cool club in SH is a club that foreigners come to party at. Particularly foreign girls. I had a promoter friend who was asking me every weekend, hey do you want to bring your friend Girl 1, Girl 2, Girl 3 to M2 tonight? The catch? The promoter has a free table, sometimes 2, and a good number of free bottles of high end liquor to share with his guests and keep them in the club. I've had quite a few good nights at M1NT and Mooks sitting at a table smashing bottles of Grey Goose, all on the house. I've even had him call me up at midnight while I'm sleeping and say Where you at? You got any girls with you? Please bring them to M1NT now! I can't stress it enough, promoters in SH are your friend. They are not there to sell you bottles, they are there to give them to you for free. White faces and pretty girl faces are a scarcity and every club owner wants them in his club. You have no idea how much money some of these local Chinese richboys will spend in a club decking out their tables with high end liquor JUST to impress a pretty girl.

Nightlife Tip 2:
At many clubs, especially on weekdays, you will find an abundance of hotties just sitting at tables, all dressed to the 9s with perfect makeup, sitting there doing nothing with a pissed off look on their face playing with their phones. These girls are not hookers. They are paid to sit there by the club owner to make the club look "full of hot girls". It's usually between the hours of 10pm and midnight, or around that time. They look so bitchy I have never even had the nerve to approach them, I don't even know if they'll speak English. But they're not hookers, so go for glory

Nightlife Tip 3:
During university holidays for UK and for USA, many Chinese university students studying overseas in USA and UK will come home to visit their families. You will find them out in clubs etc. They speak English and they're kind of on holiday. Wink.

Women

The women here cover the spectrum from drop dead gorgeous to dropped on your face ugly. It really comes down to whether or not they look after themselves. Fatness is not a problem; if you’re in the country a short time you might not catch sight of a single fat person at all, but style, hair and makeup are all big issues. The majority of Chinese woman really don’t look after themselves in this respect. When you find one that does, however, the results can be delightful. Chinese women have very plain, round faces – small button noses, small mouths, small eyes, average lips with white skin and straight black hair. As a result their faces are the perfect canvas for the makeup artist, who can really do wonderful things with them. The downside is, of course, they are very plain looking when au naturale. Add that to the fact they often have thin, curveless bodies with small tits and negative ass, and it’s clear the world has much better to offer (unless of course you’re into that skinny petite look). They come in all heights, from very tall (usually in the North) down to midget size (in the South), but they beauty is girls come to SH from all over the country to work so there’s something there for everyone (unless you like fat chicks). I also noticed many girls have blotchy skin, something often attributed to China’s pollution problem. As for their personalities I found them to be very simple minded, very closed minded, not overly ambitious or excitable. When you ask them what they want to do with their life they have pretty bland answers, maybe something like “I want to learn English” or “I want to study in America”. If you ask them about their hobbies it will be something like “Watching TV” or “Hanging out with friends”. These weren’t 18 year olds either, these were answers from 23-25 year old girls. The Chinese culture is still very much about finding a husband while you’re young and having a good family life, and you’ll find this is evident when conversing with many of the girls.
Don't think that you can't find fuckbuddies or DTF girls though. I personally never mixed much with the local women, I hung out with a mostly foreign crowd, but I know white dudes that were just killing it with Chinese girls. They met pretty much all of them at nightclubs, which is where the more open girls generally hang out as you might guess, but as you might also guess white skin has huge status in China. And they have all been watching Sex and the City with Chinese subtitles and think its so cool that American women just have sex with men they like without getting married (that's straight from a Chinese girls mouth). A good friend of mine took a girl home from M1NT who speaks no English, these days he sends her a message on Weixin, she goes straight to his house, they bang, and then he just smiles and motions her to leave and she leaves. Been going on for months. He laughs hysterically every time he tells me about it.
Remember, Chinese girls will treat their local Chinese boyfriends like shit but their foreign boyfriends like Gods. You have no idea how many times I have seen a Chinese girl verbally raping her Chinese bf on the subway, in the street, in a club, it's horrible. I've even seen the pulling hair, slap on the head, kicking, all that shit. It's a supply and demand thing. The theory is that there's a population crisis here - the one child policy has resulted in males largely outnumbering females and this has meant so many men who want to get married are desperate to hold onto a girlfriend. On the other hand, foreign men are in short supply in relative terms and Chinese girls know that if she breaks up with you there'll be plenty of other Chinese girls looking for a foreign boyfriend. MILK THIS. You are cool, you are a free man, you do not live in a communist country, you do whatever the F you want, you speak English, you have lots of money. Remember this mindset. But also remember cocky game is not as well received here in China. Negging is a terrible move. Be a flirty nice guy, but don't be a bitch. You can buy her dinner, but don't hold her handbag.

Day Game


Head to the big malls at Lujiazui, Xintiandi etc and just go into men's clothing shops. I'm Asian, so I look normal at first. But the shop assistant will always come straight to you and it's their job to follow you around and basically be your personal bitch while you're in the store. She'll just creepily walk behind you and every time you decide you want to try something on and take if off the rack, she'll take it from your hand and carry it all while you walk around the store.
Open her. As soon as I start speaking English she blushes like a tomato and is all nervous and giddy "Ohhhh noo my English no good!!" These girls are often girls from out in the village or the smaller cities. I don't think I've ever encountered one that said she was born in Shanghai. I just reassure them "No, your English is very good, where did you learn English?" She often continues to blush and just say how bad her English is, but with a few smiles and laughs they always open up. They ask where I'm from, how long I stay in China, why my face looks Chinese and I can't speak Chinese, and before long there's 3 or 4 of them standing with me all so interested in my Western, non communist, English speaking life. I get the idea that Westerner's have an air of freedom about them in China, they can do whatever the fuck they want, not like in China where you have to buy some virtual IP just to access Facebook and other stupid shit like that. This excites the local girls, especially the ones from smaller towns, and they can stand there for hours talking to you once theyre comfortable. I would say that many of the girls you meet like this are not ideally the kind you want to bang, they have very conservative views about sex and a lot of them are probably virgins. I'm not much for one to take a girls V card just for the sake of a bang, but hey that's just me. Not all the shop assistants you meet will be prude virgins anyway, so do what you will. Hitting up girls in the day is great for just getting used to interacting with the local women, learning a little Chinese etc. Some will be open to going on dates too, but in my experience many will be unbelievably nervous. Girls from the smaller cities are very sheltered when it comes to dating.

Other survival tips:

-Use SmartShanghai.com to find parties, events, concerts, new clubs etc. It's a very resourceful website and you can find some great info here on restaurants for dates etc.

-Shanghaiexpat.com is a similar site.

-If you plan on staying in the country a long time for whatever reason and need a long term visa, the student visa is an easy visa to get. Enrol in any 6 month language course and boom, student visa. I know a lot of guys that have a student visa and have probably been to 1 class in 6 months.

-Most gyms don't allow 1 day passes. You need to join for 6 months or more. Try using a hotel gym or a university gym instead, if you can.

-Staying near Fudan or Jiaotong University campus will yield good results if you can get on the foreign university students party scene. Both communities have big parties every weekend.