American tourists in Shanghai

by Matt Dela Peña

Stop #1: Jade Buddha Temple (No, that's not the Jade Buddha)

Our second day in Shanghai consisted of a lot of sightseeing. After starting the day with the most underwhelming "breakfast buffet" ever served, we made our way down to the lobby to meet our tour guide of the day, Sophie Lee.

Now, we've met a pretty monotonous set of local tour guides throughout the course of our trip. Sophie, however, wasn't the typical one we've come to know from our frequent outings. For one, she had an eccentric personality; two, she didn't demonstrate a particular liking to her job. More on that later.

A mini-bus slash van was employed to take us around, per usual. During these bus slash van rides, a regular tour guide would have talked endlessly about the history of the city we were staying at and some "fun" facts about the places we were passing by, to which no one paid much attention to.

Sophie, on the other hand, didn't bombard us with useless trivia. She provided us insight on real, life-applicable culture instead.

How'd she do that? By not reading the script the agency gave her. Simple chit-chat was all we really wanted.

Stop #2: Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall

For instance, did you know that the BMW is the most popular car make in China? Why, ask you? Well, the people who can afford cars to begin with are the ones likely to get married. Instead of a ring, men use cars to propose, particularly a BMW because it's an acronym for "be my wife".

Stop #3: The Bund (my favorite)

When we arrived at a destination, Sophie was more than happy to let us roam around and figure stuff out ourselves—you know, "have fun". There weren't any 15-minute long briefings or an imperative to stick together as if we were in a communist country that was trying to hide certain things from foreigners. No. Just an "Okay, we're here! Now scatter while I go grab some coffee."

Stop #4: Shanghai World Financial Center

While aimlessly roaming around the Shanghai Museum, fatigue slowly convincing me that none of the artifacts inside were actually that interesting, I found a cafe with comfy chairs that would serve as the last exhibit I would see for the rest of the day. It was then that Sophie, who I thought was touring everyone else, came in. She wanted to get more coffee. To make our ensuing conversation sound more cool, I will portray it in this manner:

"You aren't much of a tour guide, are you?" I scoffed, grinning.

"Aha, I see you're a clever one," she replied, her eyebrows bouncing. "I don't particularly like my job, no."

"Well, what do you really like to do?" I winked. We then proceeded to have an incisive discourse about life, politics, and Leaves of Grass (this part I'm actually serious). It was then that I learned that not all of Mao's eternal subjects succumb to what we in the West perceive as the impermeable Chinese propaganda system.

Sophie, like your average human being, has her own dream she wants to fulfill: to become a traveler. She became a tour guide amid the protest of her own parents, who wanted her to study medicine (them and all other Asian parents). Sophie is actually a CCP member because of her good grades, but that didn't stop her from expressing to an American like myself her discontent towards China's lack of democracy.

"No wonder you're such a cool tour guide," I added.

Last stop: Shanghai Museum