Are you a foreigner who wants to meet Asian women in China? If your answer is YES, then I guess Shanghai city would be the just perfect travel destination for you to appreciate your China love. Well, dating in China for foreigners is a bit different ballgame over here. The Shanghai girls in general have awesome dressing style, nice makeups, speak much better English, and love to mingle with the foreigners. I’d fairly assume that you are lucky if you are dating a lady from Shanghai. In fact, in Shanghai you’d also meet a good number of Chinese girls who have moved here from other cities in the recent past. The widely known Nanjing Lu scam is associated with these non-Shanghai girls that I witnessed during my Shanghai city trip in February, 2018. In this post, I’ll be sharing my personal experiences about the Nanjing Lu scam. I’ll also be pasting screenshots of the WeChat message exchanged with Ailsa, one of those Asian women who unsuccessfully tried to dig a hole in my pocket.
Update – I’ve just covered comprehensive reviews of the Chinese dating market (WeChat, TanTan, mindsets) in my books available on Amazon, feel free to stop by:
- Online Dating in China (Paperback Edition),
- Kindle Edition (same book – Online Dating in China).
- Dating Chinese Women (Paperback Edition),
- Kindle Edition (same book – Dating Chinese Women ).
In this post I’m going to share with you a very important concept about dating and relationship in China- When and How to Move On! This is where most of the beginner and intermediate dudes seem to get stuck.
Nanjing Lu/Road (南京路, Nánjīng Lù) in Shanghai
There are quite a few shopping streets in Shanghai. If you’d like visiting the night markets and eating out, then I’d recommend you to visit Nanjing Lu, Duolun Road (多伦路, Duōlún Lù), Yuyuan Garden (豫園, Yù Yuán) night market, etc.
There is way too much of the food in these night markets. But if you have to visit just one of the shopping streets in Shanghai, then it should be Nanjing Lu.
In fact, Shanghai’s Nanjing Lu is divided into two parts Nanjing Road East and Nanjing Road West. The night market is located in the Nanjing Road East. Although you can do shopping in the Nanjing Road West as well, it could be completely skipped if you are running out of time in Shanghai.
I’d emphasize that the pedestrianized Nanjing Road East is a must visit attraction in Shanghai city. The whole street is around 1.2km, and a 15 minutes of slow walking would be good enough to complete a one way Nanjing Lu trip.
Nanjing Lu scam & China Love
When I visited Nanjing Lu for the first time, it was around 6pm. I was immediately approached by a woman, and I thought she was a lady from Shanghai. Her English name was Wendy and wanted me to take her immediately on a date in the same street. She was divorced, and looked in the mid-30s. She also gently grabbed my hand and behaved like we knew each other for a long time. Anyways, she was single, and I thought it was okay to spend some time with her. But it was just around 6pm, and I had not visited the area completely. Spending a whole evening without seeing Nanjing Lu didn’t appear to be a very cool idea to me. 🙂 So I told her that we could meet after a couple of hours and probably hang out. She didn’t want to leave me. But since I was being a stubborn, she finally agreed to meet later. We did exchange WeChat contact before parting our ways.
As I started walking again, I was approached by more ladies. By the time I competed my Nanjing Lu walk, I was contacted by 7 different ladies. All wanted me to take them on a “romantic” dinner. However, since I wanted to see more places, I always exchanged WeChat, and suggested meetups after a couple of hours.
Characteristics of the lady from Shanghai
Let me tell you some of the common qualities of these ladies-
- I was approached by them every single time; I was never the one to initiate a conversation
- They were all fluent in English speaking
- They claimed to be divorced and single
- All looked in mid-30s
- Expert in talking to the foreigners and strangers
- They all had English names
- Wanted me to take on dinner, then and there
- They were all claiming to be from another city. One was from Ningbo, another from Huhehaote. None of them claimed to be from Shanghai
- They all talked about freedom. The lady from Huhehaote claimed to have no faith in marriage as she loved personal freedom. I gave her a patient hearing
- Since I didn’t take them to dinner immediately, the face to face conversation lasted only briefly. I was around 5 minutes with Wendy (first lady who was from Ningbo). With each of the rest, I talked only for a minute or two.
As you’d feel, they were quite experienced in terms of dealing with foreigners.
After the walk
When I finished my walk, and had eaten enough food (alone, of course), I contacted the one from Huhehaote. She said she was doing window shopping, and immediately returned back to meet me. She wanted me to take her for dinner, and I said I wasn’t hungry. She said, she was hungry. Since we couldn’t reach a consensus about dinner, we said bye to each-other.
One of the 7 ladies didn’t reply to my messages, maybe she found another guy. The one from Nanjing had deleted me from WeChat as I didn’t contact her soon enough (she had suggested me to contact her within an hour or so).
There was one, Ailsa, who tried her best to persuade me to take her for dinner. I will paste the message exchange here. She kept trying to meet me even till next couple of days. Since I had already realized the Nanjing Lu scam, I replied her rather slowly. It seems that she even messaged me from her another fake account (Daisy).
The message and s** services
Well, there are a good number of persons strolling around the Nanjing Lu, who’d contact you for “some” paid services. If you are alone, they may walk behind you following for a few minutes.
One such person who followed me, informed that it’s just for RMB 100. She said that she will arrange a taxi to get to the actual “place” to do real things. 🙂 All the time she kept flashing postcard size photos saying, “China ladies, China ladies”.
The next evening
I went to Nanjing Lu again on next evening, but a bit slightly late. I wandered around 8pm, and surprisingly I didn’t meet any of these ladies. May be they already had dinner with some Mr Right? Who the hell knows! 🙂
But I was again approached by quite a few of the massage and s** service brokers.
Anyways, I didn’t have dinner or anything with any of these girls in Shanghai. I wasn’t looking for any massage or s**, I didn’t spend any money.
But I am of the mind that a new China dweller might get trapped into some weird Situation.
Advise to shanghai city travelers to Meet Asian women
I’d suggest you to simply ignore the random persons who try to hit on you for the monetary gains. Better safe than sorry. Usually Shanghai people are very friendly and won’t be contacting you without a reason, let alone asking a for a dinner.
That’s all in this post about tips for dating in China for foreigners.
If you have any experience about China love or Nanjing Lu scam, feel free to post in our forum so that others could also contribute and learn. For regular updates like us on Facebook, or follow on Twitter!
Happy travelling in Shanghai, China! Good luck with China love.
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Cheers!
Last updated: Saturday, June 6, 2020
One trick is to take you to a bar or restaurant where they take your money and charge you a huge amount for food and drink. The difference is refunded to the girls. Just call the manager and insist on paying the menu price. They usually don’t want trouble and agree after lots of to and fro with the girl/s.
Thanks for your invaluable insights. 🙂