I’m prepared.

I land in Shanghai already knowing that China is not a poor communist country of farmers. China, in case you missed it, is at the forefront of tech.

And this comes with some perks.

Looking around, cameras everywhere. Not the ones hanging from tourists’ necks. The Big Brother kind. I spot them every time I raise my eyes above the street. It’s to keep you safe, they say.

A few hours and I get used to them.

Normalization of surveillance.

And it works.

What I struggle to normalize, though, is the traffic. My brain is confused. My senses send conflicting signals. My eyes see hundreds of scooters rushing through a red light, while my ears put me in front of a silent movie.

I feel the same confusion when I hold what I see up against the label this country wears. Shanghai, and I sense the rest of China too, seems fueled by state-of-the-art capitalism. Everything is based on money. The car you own, the house, your tech gadgets. Pudong, across the river, seems built mainly to show off.

Communism, they say.

“What did you say? No, no, Taiwan is not a country. You can say place, but not country when speaking about Taiwan.”

This is how my tour guide interrupts me as I list the countries I’ve visited so far. And, honestly, it makes me shiver.

I know Taiwan is a hot topic right now. That’s exactly one of the reasons for this trip: to witness how these countries are interconnected and how they influence each other, while the situation is still stable.

Every country has its own degree of openness about what’s going on, or what happened in the past. Clearly, China sits on the “very closed” end of the spectrum.

Floods of people are walking the paths in front of me. I’m at a corner of People’s Park.

Hundreds of papers sealed in plastic covers line the sidewalks. They all look the same: a few paragraphs, a few numbers here and there.

My confusion kicks in again. I was prepared for everything, but not for this.

The people around are mostly parents, and what’s in front of my eyes is a real-life Tinder run by them.

The papers? Their kids’ profiles. The structure is standard: age, sex, height, job, interests (I think), and sometimes salary (what did I write about capitalism?).

No photos, though. These are unlocked only after the parents agree their children could be a good match.

Honestly? I’m blown away. In 2026.

I send a picture to a friend. His Chinese wife says I’d have no market here: unemployed, no car, no property.

Thankfully, I’m already a happily partnered person.

Till the next missive,

— M