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So, getting back to Deedee, those lovely legs, that flouncy skirt, her stunning beauty…

After we’d eaten I’d planned to take a cab to a certain bar on Maoming Road. My reason for picking this bar in particular was simple; due to the road system, one has to walk a few hundred meters to get a cab home when drinks are done, and this necessitates walking past the Garden Hotel. This hotel has a lovely park, well tended and clean, old, spreading trees, winding paths under them.

When I wish to seduce a woman, I either take her to Laris or to this bar. As we leave the bar, we will walk past the garden, and I’ll point it out, having made sure to mention it over the drink, telling my date it’s well worth a look.

And indeed it is worth a look. For I have walked in that park on forty different evenings and have never met anyone else in it. Local people, seeing the gate of a hotel, will not go beyond it if they are not a resident of the hotel; and indeed I suspect that the gate guard would stop them if they tried. Much of China operates on one rule for white people and another for the locals. It’s highly offensive, and a curious way for China to choose to run its society.

But the lack of locals in the park means it is not strewn with spit and litter, as is every other city park; means the trees and plants are able to grow and thrive, rather than being picked, poked and plucked to destruction as they are in other parks; means there are no people pissing in the bushes and hawking up phlegm; means there are no security guards in ill-fitting uniforms prowling; means there are no speakers dismally fashioned into plastic rocks and toads piping out awful, awful, awful music; means there are no bright neon lights to blare anyway any trace of mood left from those speakers’ assault; means there are no kids vandalizing the place as parents look on lovingly; means I can walk with a girl on my arm without being gazed at like some curiosity from beyond the seas, without those same insouciant parents calling to their spoiled progeny, ‘Look at the foreigner!’

Means, in short, with its paths and pools of darkness, with its relative quiet, with its backdrop of the elegant hotel building, that it is the ideal place for a post-drink kiss.

Dinner was good and filled me with the hope that I might bed her that night. Our eyes meeting, hands touching, plenty of laughter, easy, free conversation. And she is far from the good-time girl I assumed she was; likes jazz, dances ballet… And is self-aware, too. ‘People look at me and think I’m the kind of person who just like pop music,’ she said.

‘I never thought that for a moment’ I lied.

Most of the other stuff we talked about I cannot recall – stuff about how she hates university (which is hardly surprising, for someone like her would find its cramped, stifling monotony unbearable) – wants to study abroad.

But toward the end of our meal, slow, leisurely, she scotched my hopes by pulling the ol’ parents number on me, Ma and Pa wanting her home by 10pm. Hah. Even so, I was still confident. Were we not paddling hands, touching legs, locking eyes? She liked being with me, was excited, effervescent. This was not a simple brush-off.

Dinner done, the weather had changed to a fine rain, so there was no point in heading to the bar and, besides, she ‘wanted to go home.’ Yet she agreed to a coffee instead, so we went to a nearby place, my one arm round her waist and the other holding the umbrella as we walked. And there again in the coffee bar we sat knee to knee, caresses, her hand on my knee, my hand on her arm.

But about this time of the evening, things went a little odd. Not between me and her. She’d been getting SMS messages all evening, but now their constant trickle became a barrage. After she’d dealt with a flurry of them, she gave me an explanation.

Since she was seven years old she’s grown up with this guy. He ‘loves’ her. They had a relationship for a while, but she ended it. He, in the way of this culture, could not accept a No; could not even understand it, simply had no concept of her right to be unpestered. Instead, just like Lucy’s guy, just like Simone’s, he pursued her with this welter of calls and messages, keeping tabs on her every movement. (I have not mentioned Simone in detail yet; she was the one who was 19 when I met her, making her my youngest lover to date; I will add that story to the to-do pile.)

This guy of Deedee’s calls her every night to make sure she’s home by ten; and calls her a little later on to ‘say goodnight’ to her.

Sure, I let him have it. Why not? I told her how wholly unacceptable this behavior was, how she should not stand for it, how her life was her choice and so on. As I told her this there was a wash of relief and recognition over her face, as though what I said accorded with a belief she was sure was true yet that no-else seemed to share; as, maybe, when one person who thinks to have spotted a UFO, to the general amused contempt of others, meets a fellow believer.

Then the guy called her. I knew it was the guy as soon as she answered up the phone, since she blushed in embarrassment and walked over to the other side of the room to take the call. These signs pleased me; they meant she did not want our tête-à-tête interrupted by this clod, that she knew he was a crass interruption to what we had going. After the call (which she confirmed was indeed from him) she told me that he was living alone here, since his parents were in the US (where he had spent a few years), and that he felt lonely and depressed; and so he could not get to sleep unless each night he called her to say goodnight. The fucking pussy.

What he was really doing was quite obvious, so I told her. ‘Don’t you see? He is trying to control you. He just wants to make sure you are at home. He doesn’t want you to be out having fun, he’s worried you might meet other men. He’s trying to control you. That’s totally wrong.’ Perhaps this had not occurred to her. When I told her, its truth was immediately apparent to her. Now since by making her see what a scumbag this guy is I can incline her more toward me, I continued to let him have it. ‘Frankly he would not dare try this in America… women there would just not stand for it and he would not even try. You know it’s just because this is China that he does it. He’d never do it to someone in the States. It makes me pretty angry.’

And in fact my own fervent desire to fuck her until she yelps aside, this kind of shitty behavior does piss me off pretty good. Guys here can be such scumbags. Not, of course, that I am in any way morally responsible or decent when it comes to women. But at least I’m not the stalker type. Yes, a liar, a cheat, a cad; but I respect each and every woman I’m with. And maybe it was a crude step to bring race into the equation… but it is a racial thing – or, better, a cultural thing which was anyway the terms in which I framed it.

Is that a brush I can be tarred with? Possibly. After all, it is my skin color that makes me desirable, that gives me an edge; and I take advantage of that. And though I like to think I do not treat women with the contempt that so many guys here express, maybe I am indeed just as bad, albeit in a different manner. But no; no, and again no. I simply do not treat women with the scorn and cowardice of so many guys in this society.

But anyhow; Deedee felt she had to go home. Yet she’d said she felt that way in the restaurant and had already stayed an hour beyond that. And her claims that ‘I must go.. let me, go, I must go’ were not much more than words, for I made no move to make her stay beyond saying ‘Only go if you want to go. Not because he says so. If you want go or if your parents tell you to go home, that’s ok. I’d respect your parents’ wishes, but not his. He has no right to control you like this.’ That’s all I said, and she stayed, our bodies close, her knee finding mine. And indeed in the end I decided to give her her exit –‘Well, then, I guess we should go..’

I saw today something I have never seen before; a parent on a bike with a kid, and the kid wearing a protective helmet. A Shanghai parent who thinks! Astonishing.

That was the new; as for the old – that was the bars and tubes and streets and coffee shops and restaurants here, which are full of people celebrating Japan’s world cup defeat at the hands of Australia. Ah, the endless ugly ignorance of Nationalism. China seems to pride itself on such stiff-necked stupidity.

But of more concern to me, Which woman to choose this weekend?

First of all there’s Ellen. Now Ellen was one of the very best fucks I’ve had here in Shanghai, hot, sexy, uncomplicated. I’ll describe that night in more detail in due course, in all its glorious and passionate detail. But it was some months ago, and, in the time since I saw her last the memory of that night has ripened and matured, and so I’ve been keen to see her again. But last weekend she was busy, the weekend before I was tied up, and I do not want to put her off much longer.


But also I want to see Feena again; I have put some work in on her already, and if I leave it too long before seeing her, that preparation will go to waste. I’ve taken her out to dinner once and had coffee twice. The last time we had coffee she needed the merest push to make her come home with me but, that night, I had other plans and so held back.

Feena, the first time I met her in class, was an open book; bright, confident body language, her eyes on mine, that hint of blush in the cheek, the dilated-pupil response, the slight breathlessness. Lovely bright smile, sparkling eyes, cute Shanghai-girl clothes. This, the way she looked at me, and the way she lingered behind after class, made me pretty certain I could bed her. But since we were still in class, since I was still her teacher, I kept at least some outward veneer of professionalism to my response to her, even though inside my attitude was anything but teacherly.

By chance I met her a few days after that first class on the platform at People’s Square subway. She was heading home to Changshu Lu, so we talked as we rode the tube there. Her body language was, once again, very clear. She told me she was home alone at the moment, her parents on business in Changchun. Again, if she had not been a current student I’d have leapt on that, asked, ‘What kind of house do you live in?’ or something like that. Then I would have lightly steered that conversation so that she could say to me ‘Why don’t you come and look?’ and thus would have spent the night with her. But once again I kept it professional, since she was a current pupil. Even so I did put in a little groundwork, the better to seduce her after class.


This groundwork was simple, easy stuff; really, it was no more than just greeting her by name when I saw her there on the platform. Basic, sure, but effective, because the class I taught her in had a good number of students in it, and I teach many different classes. The fact that I remembered her name, then, was flattering to her, and indeed she commented on it – ‘I’m really surprised you remembered my name, you must have so many students!’ I am sure she was thinking something slightly different – ‘He remembered my name, I must have made a big impression on him.’

But really the matter is quite simple; at the end of each class I make a note of what I have taught so that I do not repeat myself in the next session. In this notebook I also jot down the women that catch my eye – either by name, if I know it, or by description followed by something about what we talked of, so that the next class I can say ‘And how was your week at X Corp.?’ (or whatever the case may be) and thus lead them to think their sparkling personality made a great impact on me.

Now Ellen is a sure thing, and she’s cute, smart and lively, a lot of fun in bed. But Feena is not a sure thing and naturally I have no idea what she’s like between the sheets. So Ellen appeals to me for a sure night of passion, and Feena appeals to me for the thrill of the chase. Now of course I could just take one to dinner Friday night and the other Saturday night. But I have early class Sunday morning, meaning firstly that some measure of early night is required Saturday night and, secondly, if I have a woman with me, the necessary 7 a.m. Sunday start will not be a graceful conclusion to our revels.

I had decided to invite Ellen out Friday, and spend the night with her, and then Feena Saturday, on the basis she might, after all, not want to come home with me.

But then Tulip messaged me, to tell me she had 5 days’ holiday and suggesting dinner.

Tulip, as I mention somewhere below, is married, and rather unhappily so. The guy in question is not right for her, and she mainly married him to please her parents. Now, sure, I would love to take her to bed, but with Tulip bed is not a priority; I am extremely fond of her, and greatly enjoy time spent with her for its own sake. And so I will have to give some thought as to how to balance these various offers.

In spite of the title of this blog, my whole life is not purely a quest for sex; the company of women is simply more enjoyable than that of men. It seems to me the men in this culture have, mostly, rather little to say for themselves, but the women are confident, articulate and nuanced. Each woman is different; most men are the same. That’s why 95% of my friends are women.

Though I did meet an interesting guy the other day, square-jawed, blue-eyed – from Xinjiang province, a Muslim, a Uyghur. We talked a little and then I asked, ‘So, should Xinjiang really be part of China?’

‘Can I trust you?’ he asked, leaning forward, wanting to talk but being scared to. And rightly scared; one cannot tell the truth much in the mainland. So Xinjiang people learn to lie when they talk to mainlanders; Tibet people learn to lie; Taiwan people learn to lie; Hong Kong people learn to lie.

But anyhow. Back to vapid gossip about women.

Before I get back to Deedee, a detour to a few weeks back when I’d arranged dinner with various friends. One of these was Linda, whose company I enjoy; she’s astute and articulate, and a good journalist (which is no mean feat given how hard it is to do that job well in this country of mostly shit journalism) but, given that she is my age or so and married, I have no interest in her beyond friendship.

But it was not just because Linda is pleasant company that I wanted to have dinner with her. It was also because she said when we met she would invite Cara, a student who was in the same class as her.

Cara attracted me immediately; she was strong, bold, confident and clearly skilled at her job, since she held a good position in her firm, an multinational printer company. This is just the kind of woman I like, the one who knows what she wants, who she is, and who has little time for all the traditional shit of being good, sweet, demure and submissive. Fuck that.

But alas, galloping in, I riled her. Keen, in my pathetic way, to show her I was a knowledgeable chap, when she mentioned the firm she worked for I made a little joke of it. It so happened I’d read an article in The Economist about this firm just the day before, saying it lost US$600 million this year due to fraudulent accounting at the top. A firm with that kind of management, I suggested, could not prosper.

This did not go down well, and she sulked at me the rest of the course.

Or maybe I was just staring at her breasts too obviously. That could have been it.

A couple of weeks after the course ended, Linda, at my request, had given her my MSN and told her I would quite like to hear from her, and in due course she added me to her list. We chatted, guarded at first, for clearly she thought I was after her; so I got that out of the way with (mostly false) claims of friendship only. After that she yielded a little, becoming a bit more talkative, but not too much so. Even so, this talkativeness was enough to make it clear she was single. She did not tell me this directly, but instead said she’d had a ‘difficult’ few months.

For a woman in China this nearly always means one thing: splitting up with a guy. Linda had previously told me Cara had a guy in Hong Kong and later I established that my present surmise was correct. They had indeed parted.

Anyhow, I reminded Linda to invite Cara, which she did, and I also invited Tulip, who accepted but then had to change her mind. But just after Tulip said she could not come, I got an SMS from Arina, who was heading out of Shanghai the next day and wanted to know if we could meet that night.

Now, Arina has been on my catch list for some time; but the chase is not going too well, and I may not succeed. Naturally Arina too was someone I met in class, yet now it shocks me just how totally I failed to notice at the time how stunning she is. Strikingly tall, over 6 foot, and with great looks. With heels on, she'd be taller than me. 

I did not want to pass up this chance to get to know Arina better before she left town, so I slotted her right in the place Tulip had just vacated (reflecting to myself as I did so on the merry-go-round nature of my social life).

Now of course given that I would quite like to chase Cara, this was tactless. But Cara is a little older, maybe 27, 28, and that means problems. With a woman that age, it is never fuck and run, never fuck and fun; marriage is always there in the equation. Getting her to bed would take too much legwork, as would getting out again afterward; and in any case fitting another woman into my already full calendar would be tough.

Thus chasing her would lead to tanglements and complications (even besides the fact that, at present, she does not quite like me). It’s a pity that we got off on the wrong foot, because I get the feeling she and I could have made firm friends. But she is a little proud (which I much respect) and will not back down so easily. Sure, with work, I could get Cara, and she’s certainly attractive. There’s a sort of boyishness to her, a hard, unyielding edge. It’s really rather endearing But chasing her would be too much hassle. Putting in that work would create obligations, duties that I do not wish to incur.

So I reckoned I might as well invite Arina along. She was the better prize than Cara. But as well as that, it interested me to bring Arina along for another reason than my desire for her. Cara, shrewd as she is, was surely aware I had some feeling for her. But what better way to throw her off guard, to toy with her, than to turn up to dinner with breathtaking Arina by my side?

Shanghai… Oh, modern city of wonders, the Paris of the East, mysterious, sultry and all the other tired hyperbole that goes with such descriptions. I remember one particularly excitable piece that said the city ‘lived in hypertime’ (by a verbose buffoon called Patrick Cranley, I recall; and indeed a Google reveals him in all his buttock-clenching awfulness here, at the New York Times, no less). What preposterous nonsense it all is!

Shanghai is like a peasant in a shiny suit – superficially impressive, but when you get to know it, still provincial, rustic, haphazard. It’s a guy that’s spent a thousand dollars on Armani and then wears it with beat-up black shoes and white socks.

Thus for example the subway system; the city spends billions on it, filling the news with bluster about the city’s modernity and efficiency – and then closes one subway line at 10pm and the others shortly after. Now the last trains are always full – indeed sometimes so full it is almost impossible to get on board -- clearly indicating the people want to use them. But still they close at ten, ten-thirty, pushing crowds onto the street, all fighting for cabs which, at such times (and even more so in the rain) are exceedingly hard to find.

Or take the elevated highway network -- billions spent, and for a fucked up result. This is not just down to bad usage (though with Shanghai’s breathtakingly appalling drivers, that’s a large part of the problem) but also to do with utterly inept design. Each exit and entry point shares the same bit of road. This means that vehicles trying to shove their way on mix with vehicles trying to shove their way off, a chaotic foul up that starts in the inside lane and then thickens and spreads so that the whole motorway lurches to a halt. The situation is so bad that at rush hour the cops have to close off junctions to keep the motorway flowing. How’s that for a billion dollars? The slab’s a handful of years old but already obsolete.

Or the maglev – another billion dollars’ worth – which can only operate at full speed for 45 seconds, since the track’s too short (indeed ending some miles out in Pudong, meaning that to get to the city center one must take the tube or a cab, thus making the journey by maglev barely faster than that by bus from the airport direct.)

Sure, the city has one or two areas that show some class; but on the whole it is a town of belching and barging, spitting and shoving, thieves and beggars… and those insane drivers. China… 1% of the world’s cars but 15% of the world’s car deaths.

But enough of this shouting. For the most part life here is ok, and so… back to burbling about women. Back to Deedee.

I’d heard nothing from her the day or two after class, so I thought she had likely tossed my card in the bin, brushing me aside with all the other guys that (I assumed) hit on her. But no; a few days later I get this message –

This is my phone number. After the final class you have give me your name card. Deedee.

I was deliriously glad she’d got in touch… and so of course I replied like the horny toad I am; we traded a few messages, during which she told me she was feeling sad, though she did not reply when I asked why.

Now my classes generally conclude with an oral exam a few days after lessons proper finish. Based on her lackadaisical approach to those lessons, I was pretty sure she would not turn up.

Yet turn up she did, though she came and went without doing the exam. I did not know she was there until she popped her head round the door to say she was going. This, I later found out, was because she had become tired of waiting. The way she put it suggested she thought the students were talking too much – but really that was not quite the case.

The interviews were taking a long time since I found one or two of the students quite interesting. One woman, Joan, especially so. I’d talked a little about politics in class (a waste of time since most students know zero about it and refuse to countenance any political view that does not enshrine the ‘China right, rest of the world wrong’ view.) She told me I ought not talk about this. Now in one way that was an expression of her rigid thinking, but in another, it was impressive. It is very rare for a student to talk back to the teacher like this, and I admired her for it.

Since that class I have got to know here a little better, and grown rather fond of her. Though I’m glad to have got to know her, back at that interview, I berated myself, reminded myself I was a cunt, since it seemed to me chatting with her at length had deprived me of Deedee. Thus I felt I had missed a big opportunity by chasing a smaller one.

After Deedee’s brief appearance, I interviewed one of the guy students; he was quite an engaging chap, interesting to talk to. He asked if he could record the interview—‘for Deedee, the cute student.’ So when he turned it on I took the chance to flirt with her in absentia, speaking into the mouthpiece that she should have come to the interview.

It did occur to me that maybe this guy had a thing for her too, and that this was his way of showing it; guys here are seldom direct, but woo by proxy in this way.

Not just guys; the indirect approach pervades so much of life here. The other night, for example, I went out for dinner with Tulip, a woman I am extremely fond of. She’s stuck in a rather odd marriage (married two years and still a virgin), and when we meet I usually ask her about it and usually urge her to get divorced; doing so, I am sure, would bring her greater happiness in her life, though of course it’s much easier for me to give advice than it is for her to follow it. She told me she had begun to push this option, saying to her husband, ‘If you find a better woman, you should go for her.’

She was waiting for his reply to this, she told me; but in some exasperation I told her she had not asked any question at all and that her husband, if he had said nothing about the weirdness between them by now, would not start to say it unless she raised it in a far more direct manner.

But I will return to Tulip later, since I want to talk about her (and the many ways in which she fascinates me) at some length.

As for this guy at the interview (who I have now totally forgotten – name, face, what we talked about; what I am writing here is reworked from my diary) – well, if I had been him I would have simply cut out my voice from the recording, for if this was my attempt to woo her I would not want some other guy on there. But I think guys here are not quite so cynical and calculating.

It’s possible of course he was just being helpful, and at the time I also wondered if she has just asked him to do it. But when, later, I took her to dinner, I mentioned this incident, and she knew nothing about it. That leads me to think the recording was indeed his bid for her, shrouded in a typically oblique approach.

I, of course, was totally the opposite to this, and just ran at her with my usual bull-like manner. I hurried home after the interviews to look up the Chinese character for ‘lazy,’ so that I could tease her in Chinese, and then I texted her to say Deedee，你太懒了！为什么你不来考试？哈哈

She said: 我怕老师

I replied: 你怕我？噢！我非常不高兴！

Then she said:是害怕考试我准备了好多天但是还是没有勇气这是我我的错对不起原谅我吧!

And again said: 老师别生气是我不好

So I: 我很生气！所以你必须见面我，喝一杯咖啡！

To which: 我不会喝酒不知道我可以喝果汁吗？

So I hit her for a date: 哈哈几天有空？

And: 下周比较空除了周一都可以的

I ended this with ‘Good! I wanna get to know you better.. I’ll 短信u on Tuesday'

So that Sunday I hit her up again, suggesting we meet. She said, ‘除了周一我都有空.’ So I grabbed her as fast as I could, for Tuesday night, but not wanting to appear too keen and thus scare her off, I said coffee or dinner were both ok, but that I preferred the latter. And she: ‘我们吃晚饭吧！时间地点你说罢.’

My choice was obvious, Laris, so I set the rendezvous. She said ‘好的你可以写英文的我看得懂的’ and then ‘哈哈你欺负我手极不方便发英文短信.’

There’s no need to provide a translation for this, for it’s all obvious stuff; I reproduce it in the original Chinese just to show how desperate I was to impress her. I would imagine to a Chinese reader my attempt to do so is pretty risible.

Next evening we met… I’d half expected her to cancel, for surely a woman like her has guys ever after her and I was just one more? But not so; she even arrived a little before me.

As I walked up out of the tube, the crowds standing on the plaza above were revealed to my eyes. My eyes fastened on one pair of legs in particular, slender, shaped, clad in black stockings. The higher I rose up the steps, the more of these legs I saw, up and up a slice at a time, up to a short, short sexy, flouncy skirt.

That skirt alone was enough for me to expect it was her, even before I had come far enough up the steps to see her face; and it was. This skirt was sexy but curious – it was more of a tutu than a skirt, deep bronzy gold, ruffled and flounced. She looked like she had just come off stage. Those black stockings underneath and ah, those legs! How I imagine them clutching my back… and how I vowed to work to make that happen, how I vowed to take her home and fuck, fuck, fuck her that same night.

When the revolution comes, they will blame the foreigners first.

At the end of every course I teach, I tell the students my email is available on the university website, so that they can ask me for help with their compositions, job applications and the like. Mostly I do this because I am aware my earning power is much greater than theirs, and I get paid 200 rmb an hour for more or less talking in my native tongues. Most of them do not earn that much in a day; and even the Chinese staff doing the same job as I do, with English perfectly good enough for the task, earn less (whereas they ought of course earn more, since they are fluent in both English and Chinese, whereas I am only fluent in English). So making myself available for any student who is inclined to ask makes me feel a bit less guilty about the matter. Foreigners do get an easy deal here; and that is why if revolution ever does come (unlikely as it is with China’s placid, passive population, too supine to ever ask questions) we foreigners will get the first blame for what, truly, are the ills and evils of the government and the Chinese people’s own ignorance.

But the other reason is that it is a convenient way to hit on the female students that catch my eye without doing it too crudely; the whispered word as they leave, ‘Keep in touch.’

The drawback to this situation is that after each class, a host of students will add me to their accounts, meaning that I general I cannot pick out the women I am most keen to talk to. Is the new person who wants to chat to me a man or a woman? If a woman (and it is frequently impossible to tell by name alone, especially when written in pinyin), is it one of the ones I am interested in?

Of course I cannot straight come out with it, ask Are you a guy or girl?’; and in general each conversation begins with the student saying, ‘Hi, I am your student. Do you remember me?’ – which is no help at all. But it is usually easy to find out the gender without even asking loaded questions; the fact is women in China are eloquent, talkative, opinionated, loquacious and each an individual; the guys are mostly monosyllabic, misinformed and identical. (Which is why 90% of the students who add me are women anyhow.)

The dilemma grows even greater if we begin chatting a few weeks after the classes are over, for by that time I generally have no memory at all of the woman or the class, so easily are they replaced in my interest by subsequent students.

The long and the short of it is, from time to time I make a coffee or dinner appointment with a woman whose face and form I cannot remember.

This is the lucky dip, and in general it is something I rather enjoy… heading for the rendezvous, wondering what she will be like, what age, what looks, what availability.

As a child I would go to an annual fair near my home. There was a lucky dip stall there, a large tub filled with bran in which was hidden a selection of gifts, some better, some worse. The image of my hand burrowing into the bran, and the feeling of anticipation that went with it; these are on my mind each time I make such a date.

Sweetie was one such dip, and a dip that came up lucky.

I’d been helping her online with a fairly complex paperwork problem, and (more by luck that judgment) had managed to solve it for her with some aplomb; coffee was natural after this. Heading to meet her, I still had no clear idea of who she was. But to my pleasure I found she was a woman from a class I’d taught a few weeks before.

True, I would likely never have thought about this woman again had I not met her now, but in that class she was the one I wanted.

Sometimes there is more than one woman I incline to in a class, but only rarely nil; for even if it is not such a good batch there are still gradations, ranks. And so there’s always one woman I’ll choose in each class.

And, online at least, Sweetie had a sexy personality, which seemed promising. So we had our coffee, and I asked the questions I needed to ask, married, boyfriend, and so on (whether the woman has a husband or boyfriend or not does not matter; what matters is how she talks of him. If it is with love, then I know I have no hope; if it is with brief coolness (as most generally it is) then I know I have a chance). In this case, the prognosis was good. So we had our coffee, we talked and we flirted, but no more than that; sex may be easy here but it is not quite that easy.

But I knew I had done a good job, for, talking to Sweetie online a little later that night, I saw she had added a line of text by her sign-in name:

`He said I am cute and funny, and many guys will run after me. But I see a fat boring girl in the picture. The picture is honest.’

I had indeed told her she was cute and funny as we drank our coffee, and now I repeated it. She half-believed me.

I guess – no, I am sure – an objective viewer of this would see me as rather predatory, manipulative. Maybe it is so. But I liked her in class, I liked her when I met her in person; she was cute, appealing. And, sure, it is not much more that friendship and fuck for me; but as far as that goes, it is genuine.

A week or so later I hit her up for dinner, meeting near Henan Zhong Lu. Now, Shanghai’s best restaurant for a seduction, Laris, is in that part of town. It always works a charm, and I have had great success with the women I have taken there. However, I knew I had already charmed Sweetie – I did not need to do any more. And frankly I like to reserve this place for women who intrigue me a little more than Sweetie did – my interest in her was purely physical, purely fuck.

But as it happened, Sweetie had her own suggestion, a Guangdong place hard by, which suited me fine. It was ok, though too brightly lit as are most purely Chinese restaurants (I mean those not catering to an international clientele) and with patchy, generic service. For the first ten or twenty minutes of our date she played her Nintendo, or maybe Gameboy; whatever it was, she was keen to take it to a point where she could save the game.

The meal done, we pondered what next – but there was not really much ‘we’ to it, for she was waiting for me to make a decision. The decision I wanted to make was, let’s fuck. But of course I could not deliver it so crude as that. It had to seem as much her decision as mine; so I offered that we could go for a beer. But Sweetie thought maybe it was a little early to go to a bar, so I suggested she might like to ‘see’ my place.

She agreed: and so back we went by tube, which she preferred to a cab (I think because she wanted to seem somewhat modest, and a cab would have been rather more intimate). But even so, we kissed a little on the tube, though mostly modestly -- unlike a little later in my bedroom, where kissed with more passion.

But even then she wanted to keep it under control, so after some passionate kisses she broke away and said ‘Let’s have coffee!’ While it was brewing she stood on the balcony, and I went to her there, kissing her some more, my hands roving her body, pressing her pussy through her trousers.

The coffee never got drunk, cooling by the side of the bed as our passion rose. It was my normal routine, kisses starting on the mouth then moving to all over face, to neck, ears, to her still-clothed body, to belly, to top eased up and off over her head, and roll over, unhook her bra, and kiss breasts, nipples – her breasts a little spread, but pleasing – and she takes my top off, and I kiss her pussy through her trousers, trousers off, her just in panties and me too; and then her naked, and me following and, (as many other women have said), the ‘It’s much bigger than … other guys..’ There, the slight pause because she did not want to say ‘the other guys I’ve fucked.’ This of course this might be what women say to all men – how would I know? – but it is surely not mere flattery. The average Chinese cock ain’t up to much, as shown by no other evidence than the condoms sold in China are simply too small.

Getting inside her was – again as with other women – not so easy. It hurt her, though, unlike Gloria, or Jiping, she did not let that stop her, she bore it and, with plenty of lube, the pain subsided after a while. And as she got used to it, she got more into it, me coming from behind, from spoon position. At first, she would not go on top but anon she did; later she told me her reluctance was due to doing this with a past lover – it had hurt him she said, so she thought maybe she was doing it wrong. Some wimpy Chinese guy in her past, I guess. Rolling her over later, I quested for a bit of anal, nudging my cock against her there – and as she did not demur, I pushed on, getting in maybe an inch. Then it began to hurt, so I desisted. But she was willing, so with more lube, more preparation, it might be achieved – and frankly that would be almost half the reason for me seeing her again.

The other half of my reason for seeing her again goes back to earlier conversations we have had, in the various mediums; I think it was on msn first that she mentioned she was having dinner with her wife. ‘Wife?’ I’d queried. She’d explained that she had a number of very close women friends, so close she called them her wives. There was a sexual tone to this, and when we talked in the coffee shop that time I referred to it again. Her response was equivocal enough to make me wonder more.

Making love to two women at once, and having the two women make love to each other, is of course the ultimate fantasy of many men. It is not something I have done yet, but it is naturally something I am most keen to experience.

Now Chinese women in public life are the boring, tame creatures Chinese men want them to be. But between the sheets, they come alive; clutched by passion, you can reach the raw woman, with all society’s bullshit shucked off. And so asking a woman about a sex act is best done in the middle of a sex act. Thus I let a quizzical expression play across my face and, sure enough, she asked What are you thinking?’

With a show of hesitant reluctance, I said, ‘I am wondering what you would do if another woman came in and kissed you.’ I’d tried something similar on Lucy (to whom I believe I said ‘I am imagining you with another woman..’) and she’d shown some expression of interest; and so too now Sweetie pondered it, said, `Maybe.. one of my friends might like to do that…but I’d have to think about it – I wouldn’t want to risk her friendship if she said no.’

So that’s pretty much what it comes down to – my sole reason for seeing her again would be anal or lesbian. Thus masculinity!

Deedee turned out to be a student at one of the city’s better universities, the East China University of Politics and Law. (‘Better’ is of course relative – even the best university here is still only the turd floating on top of the cesspit).

This was something of a surprise to me. See, another part of the image of Shanghai Woman is bimbo. And while in my right-on liberal way I try not to categorize so crudely, Deedee’s late arrival to class (she had missed the first session entirely) and her good-time-girl demeanor, led me to the lazy conclusion that there was more to her exterior than her interior.

But, shallow as I am, I was still exceedingly keen to impress her, and this I tried to do, in what, to a Western woman, would likely have been amateurishly obvious. Since I know most of the universities here, I asked her ‘Do you study at the Songjiang or Zhongshan Park campus?’ and this (which had been my sole purpose in asking) impressed her.

‘Two years at each,’ she said, telling me she was studying German. ‘But I hate it’

‘Guess what I studied as an undergrad?’ I asked.

She of course said ‘I don’t know.’

‘German’ I told her – at which she laughed and blushed.

This was of course shameless flirting, and while I half expected she was quite astute enough to see it, it was less obvious to the two guys in her group, since guys here, on the whole, have fuck all idea about flirting, even flirting as crude as mine. As we talked I tried not to gaze at her perfect good looks too closely; but dragging my eyes away was hardly better. As she sat she leaned against the wall, sitting at right angles to the proper direction of the seat, her body full of life and movement, her legs up on the seat next to her. Because of this, I pretty much had to keep gazing directly into her eyes – otherwise I would be looking at her breasts or at her panties, since she was wearing a very short skirt which, with her legs up on the seat. This is not to say I did not look – of course I looked – and even though all I could see from my brief, furtive glance was the fabric of her black tights under the skirt, it was still quite enough to make me need to pull down my sweater after I’d done talking.

As I talked to others in the group I scored another hit or two. The other girl among them asked one of the guys how to say jinmi in English – and I supplied the translation, ‘calculating’ (they were talking about Shanghai people). Then a moment later the guy wondered what ‘zhuanye’ meant – ‘specialty’ I told him. Boots chick (this was how I labeled her in my mind at the time, since I did not know her name) noticed both these and I could tell she was a little bit impressed by it; for all it takes is a word or two like this to make people think one’s fluent at a language.

Now I’ve been here five years but I’m a lazy swine so my Chinese sucks – as does that of most foreigners here. Most of us expect the locals to know our language, rather than bothering to learn theirs; and thus there is some kudos in being able to speak it. And I was so pathetically keen to impress this woman that I wanted her to think I was one such foreigner.

Pathetic and also fickle, since the very next day, in a different class, another Shanghai Woman grabbed my attention -- Echo. She was not quite so cute as Deedee, though dressed sexily; but with her it was more what she talked about with me that hooked me. She’d studied fine art at university, so I asked her to describe a show she’d been to. She chose Seiji Ozawa’s recent visit – something I had been very keen to go and see, but had got pickpocketed on my way there. She told me the concert was great, but also that Ozawa was a bit irritated by the constant stream of latecomers. This is an irritation every artist has to put up with, since audiences here lack the common graces of back home. Indeed Shanghai audiences, like Shanghai drivers, are the rudest and most ill-mannered thoughtless oafs I have encountered.

At the end of this class Echo lingered to ask ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’ I assumed she wanted to have coffee to get my advice about language stuff; but not so. She wanted to offer me two tickets to a Bartok concert, which she could not use due to having class. I was really most touched she offered them to me, and gladly accepted. ‘I can give them to you now’ she said. ‘They’re in my car.’ And so she took me to it, a new blue shiny one. And thus she turned my head – musical, fashionable, well-heeled. Quite worth a chase… and chase her I did; and will write about that, too, later.

But to get back to Deedee; my next class with her was a week later or so, but I did not really expect her to turn up. Her absence in the first and half attendance in the second made it fairly clear she wasn’t much interested in learning. Many students are pressured into these classes by her parents and only attend grudgingly, and I assumed she was one of these (something she later confirmed.)

And indeed she was not there; but, half an hour into the class she turned up. The door opening slowly and her peeking her head round, knowing I would tease her on it. But I just smiled at her lighthearted entrance and let her go to her seat with little further comment (normally I make the late students say why they’re late, partly to get them talking but also since it makes the others laugh, which makes them more confident to talk). And then I spent the rest of the class, up until the break, trying not to check her out too much. But as I called the break I saw her pulling on a scarf. I knew she was going to make a run for it. Not alone from her putting the scarf on, but also from the conversation she’d had on her mobile phone, whispering quietly (but not so quiet that I could not hear) to arrange meeting people. I knew she would wait until I left the room so she could escape without my comment, and I knew if I had stayed in the room she might not have had the bottle to go. So I could have kept her there just by staying put.

But I made it easy for her – out of an ulterior motive, of course. I slipped my wallet from my coat into my pocket and went out into the corridor to lurk; there I got chatting with one of the guys from the class. I heard the classroom door, out of my line of sight, open; and I heard the precise click of high heels on the tiles. I knew it was her. She was clearly hoping not to get rumbled and gave me a sheepish smile when she saw me. I smiled back, keeping it genial, fairly light, though I could not resist saying ‘It was hardly worth coming!’ Then I walked down the steps with her, so that, out of sight of any other student, to save her blushes and mine (for I did not want to so obviously hit on her in front of the class), I could extract from my wallet the business card I had made sure to put there before leaving home. She smiled at this, and I could not read the smile. I like to think it was a smile of surprise and pleasure at this unexpected thing. But a more objective interpretation would be that it was the smile of a woman used to getting hit on. She told me her name – this was the first time I’d heard it – and off she went. There was a car waiting for her across the road, shiny, new, other people her age in it, Shanghai’s new rich.

As the car slid off down Shitu road into the noise and night, she turned to wave goodbye to me, smiling; my heart leapt and sighed, but I did not expect to hear from her again.