Undead Astronauts

Speed Dating

Last saturday I went to a speed dating event with Manuelo and another female friend who was Dutch Chinese from Holland (“dc girl”). The event rules stipulate that you have 8 minutes to talk to a girl, after 8 minutes, you rotate to the next girl. from 7:30 to 10, you should be able to talk to about 20 girls. I got there at around 7 and met my dc girl to first have a light drink while waiting for Manuelo to show up… There were several white guys there, but more asian guys. The guys seemed on average older than the girls, but there were more girls, the ratio being around 3:2. 

After waiting 30 miuntes, Manuelo shows up with a super tight black shirt with “1A” on it. Manuelo works out alot, is fairly big, and wears dark rimmed spectacles. He is somewhat sleezy, creepy looking as you can imagine. (In case you have forgotten, reference Manuelo from the prostitution stories. ) We all pay 100 rmb to enter the event.

The event begins with you first filling out a form that lists your education, job, hobbies, and location. Manuelo fills out for his job that he is a porn star. He is quite obsessed with porn and it’s his favorite subject matter.

We begin by sitting down at a table, each table has 2 girls instead of the stipulated 1 girl per table. Me and Manuelo decide to tag team the tables since there were 2 girls anyways. It was actually pretty fun because we were together. We made alot of jokes about one another to keep things light. I dont think it helped to make us more attractive however because I suspect that the girls were fairly serious in looking for a stable relationship. In particular, a relationship with a westerner.

The age of the girls ranged from 23 i think to 31. from the people i talked to, I remembered the their jobs ranged from secretaries, nail salon, elementary teachers, financial consultants, music teacher, jazz singer, etc; all over the place. One girl asked manuelo what porn star was, he became shy and told her to look it up when she gets back home.

Pretty much each 8 minutes went the same way, you make an intro, they make an intro, I talk about what it means to be a US attorney in china, they tell me what they do, me and manuelo joked around, times up.

Half way through the event dc girl got bored and came to join me and manuelo at the table we were currently at. I think the girls at the table was a little offended that we weren’t taking things more seriously. Dc girl didn’t care, she went from table to table with us. I suspect she decreased me  and Manuelo’s credibility with other girls. We made it around to 3/4 of the room when time ran out. Apparently the organizers weren’t so good at organizing. At the end of the event, we all put down 3 names (girls we liked). 2 matches were made, and a most popular pick was chosen. Of course, the most popular guy was some middle aged white guy, and the two couples matched was these 2 Asian girls and 2 white guys. Manuelo swore that one of the girls chosen liked him instead. The matching system seems dysfunctional as well to me and I didn’t understand the point of putting down 3 names if they only choose two couples. The nail salon girl was a the most favorite female picked because she looked hotter than the rest of the girls.

So from this little experiment it seems like, girls pick based on skin color and guys pick on how hot a chick is. haha is that a fair analysis of Shanghai?

I was interested in this Jazz singer, she put her name on my card and gave me a number. But in the end she wasnt my match even though I put her name on my card. So i never called.

All in all, it was a fun time if you dont have any real expectations to meet a girl or if you dont get too angry when you see local girls falling for white guys.