For any of you who attended the recent Shanghai logistics event, you will surely be familiar with these eye-catching cards! And for those of you who did not attend, if any of your male colleagues who were there, deny ever seeing these cards…they’re lying! But to be fair to them, any obvious foreigner who was male could not possibly enter or leave the Shanghai New International Expo Centre without being deluged by touts bearing these unique calling cards. On the first day of the event, one of our Belly Achers suffered a near fatal injury when he was hit in the temple with the pointy end of one of these cards that was expertly flicked through a 3cm opening in the rear window of his taxi. Despite the fact the card featured a very pretty woman, he was downright annoyed! But the biggest surprise was yet to come.

The same Belly Acher left the grounds at the end of day one in a taxi with a male and female colleague after apparently not having learned a single thing from his earlier experience. Unwittingly inviting disaster, the front passenger window was left rolled down – we think the taxi driver was in cahoots with the touts – and faster than you could say Messe Muenchen, half-a-dozen touts flicked literally dozens of these cards into the taxi. Even if you roll up the window, the wily touts can still somehow get the cards inside! The cards, as you can probably clearly see for yourself feature rather attractive, bikini clad (or less) women, who apparently offer hotel massage services for as little as RMB100 (US$15) per hour. In a true demonstration of supply and demand, on day two of the three-day event the price dropped, with the cards proclaiming RMB80 per hour! Intriguingly some of the cards were advertising “hotel massage RMB80 Pea Hour”. Now, we’re not quite sure what ‘Pea Hour’ is, but to be honest we don’t really want to find out. And as if it matters…the cards also proclaim “Excellent English speaking!” Yup, we reckon anyone availing themselves of these services will be looking for some stimulating English conversation!