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Valentine's Comp: The Results

Read all about it: Shanghai's best and worst dating stories, as submitted by the intrepid users of SmartShanghai's ever-popular dating site
Last updated: 2015-11-09


So, we’ve been running our Valentine’s competition, asking you to send us all the zany crap you’ve been getting up to with people you met on SmartShanghai Dating. Mainly, it’s for those of us without anyone to hold tonight, so we can sit at home alone and read your stories of love and feel like we’re involved, in some small way, in Shanghai’s kaleidoscopic dating scene.

Thanks to all those who stumped up their stories. Thanks to FJ99 (probably not his real name) who told us about shaving a Belgian girl’s armpits in the toilet of a certain high-rise club. Thanks to TuttiFruitGirl69 for telling us about the revenge she brought crashing down upon a certain Hong Kong fellow after he ran out on the bill at el Willy on their second date. And thanks to Malcolm X, for his controversial story about Black Power, and the African American struggle for self-determination in the 1960s.

However, we only had a handful of prizes to give out, and these were our favorites (usernames have been changed):

A Fine Romance


I met Sexypyjamas on the SmartShanghai forums back in 2003. We chatted, we flirted, we swapped dirty limericks. We met two months later at an unofficial SmartShanghai party in some now-closed club of drunken debauchery, organized by Carsten Warga, Missile Myles and Jane Siesta. We had six years of animal, gymnastic sexual antics until we married in 2009 and had a baby boy, called Jake a year later, who is two in a few weeks. We met because of SmartShanghai. Thank you SmartShanghai.

Winner: A box of hand-made chocolates from Eclair at the Andaz hotel


Worst SmSh First Date


SmartShanghai Dating seems to attract the weirdest, smartest, scariest, most ridiculous, most fascinating, most extraordinary, most immature yet most handsome men in this city − and I seem to have met them all. Here’s my worst Shanghai first date ever.

Mr. X (37) caught my attention because his profile name was “Above-ur-Standard.” In his profile, Mr. X said he had achieved everything and felt ready to find a girl. Curious to meet an über-cocky guy who had “achieved everything,” I contacted him.

Mr. X looked great when he walked into the bar. He sat down, pulled out a copy of my profile and my messages to him, and said: “Did you hire a dating consultant to write this? Because... this is funny.” He kept on interrogating me about the dating consultant and asked me to recite my own emails to check I had actually written them.

That was the only time we talked about me. The rest of the time, he talked about himself. The moment I started to say something, he would interrupt: “This reminds me of the time I went to this exclusive party in Las Vegas, where so-and-so star showed up...” When asked about what he meant by “achieved everything by age 37,” he said: “I made a lot of money. I own a few houses. I won marathons. I have this great MBA. I lived in Europe. I don't have anything left on my list." I was highly amused.

After about an hour, he asked me: “What’s your name?” I told him my name. He replied: “No, no, no. You're lying. You signed your email with a different name.” Thank god for guys who print out all your emails for their first date! I couldn't help laughing when I saw I’d signed one off with “à bientôt.” I'm still not sure whether Mr. Above-ur-Standard actually thought my first name was “à” and my last name “bientôt” but I do know that I will never forget Mr. X, the guy with the fantastic education who has achieved everything by age 37... including living in Europe.

In all fairness, I have had some of my best dates thanks to SmSh. I have met some great guys who turned out to become genuine friends. And I met somebody that ended my existence on SmSh Dating within 10 hours (the length of our first date). We've been inseparable ever since.

So, thank you, Smart Shanghai. Thank you for filling my life with excitement, weirdness, laughter, entertainment, disbelief, surprises and love, year after year. Seriously, thank you.

Winner: A night in one of the Grand Hyatt’s Deluxe Club Riverview rooms


A Cautionary Tale of High-flying Hi-jinx


There is a guy called “Mrsimon” on your dating website. He says his name is Simon Powel. Actually he is Nigerian cheat. He told me he lives in Beverly Hills and is a private pilot. He told me he planned to fly his own plane from Nigeria to Shanghai to visit me (because his mom was sick in Nigeria, so he went to pick her up), but when he stopped in the Philippines, he ran out fuel and didn’t have enough money to buy more gas.

Unfortunately, he’d also lost his credit card so he asked to borrow US 4000. He even had a Western Union account I could use to transfer the money. However, I sensed something was amiss with all this because I could see that he was online when he said he would be in the air, flying his plane.
This is all a fraud. I suspect a team of fraudsters are handing out the Yahoo! and MSN ID for this “Simon Powel” to cheat girls out of their money. They may even be involved in trying to kidnap girls to sell in other countries. I just can’t imagine how badly this could have gone. Thank you very much!

Winner: A box of hand-made chocolates from Eclair at the Andaz hotel


Found Love on SMSH


When I signed up for SmSh Dating it was a little more basic. There was just one photo and couple questions about yourself, so a lot was predetermined based on your photo and whether or not you had a witty username.I eventually meet a couple of girls on the site. Nothing terrible, nothing immediately amazing. But, the fact remained, I got to meet new people.

So, I convinced my roommate to join. Skeptical at first, he let me help him make an account. We used his Chinese name (which means Man from Outer Space) as his username and uploaded a pic. Not long afterwards, he was chatting with a cutie and BAM! They had a date set. My friend hadn't been on many dates since arriving in Shanghai so he took the classy route and planned a night that started with a walk in the park, moved on to some fine dining and ended with some good dessert. I wished him luck as he set out for the night.

At about 11pm, I got back to the apartment and heard some rumbling coming from his room. I grinned and tiptoed into my quarters, but not before hearing his date screaming with pleasure. The best part? She wasn't yelling his name, but his username: “Waixingren, Waixingren!”

Maybe she was a “Waixingren” herself, or something about the universe just turned her on. All thanks to SMSH dating.

Winner: A massage toy from sexy-sex sex company, LELO


SmartShanghai Dating currently has more than 12,000 members, so if you’re still looking for love, or for a girlfriend or boyfriend, a casual date, a fellow food-lover, other newcomers, sports partners, drinking partners, party partners … or something that is not so easily pigeonholed into a neat little category, there’s probably someone on there who’s after the same thing. Sign up here. What better day to do it? Naturally, it’s free to set up an account.

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