7 Tourist Scams in Shanghai

You match with someone on Tinder or TanTan your first night in Shanghai. They're charming, their English is polished, and they suggest meeting up right away. When you ask where, they recommend a bar near Nanjing Road — they know just the place. You meet outside, they walk you in. The vibe is nice. Drinks are pricey but hey, you're in Shanghai. Your date keeps ordering. Not just ordering — ordering aggressively, refilling before glasses are empty, ordering food you didn't ask for. You're having a good time so you don't track the bill. When it comes: ¥5,000. One user on r/travelchina reported paying more than that for champagne alone. The match vanishes or becomes oddly cold. The bouncers near the door are very much still there. This scam has its own dedicated warning post on r/travelchina — 'Visiting Shanghai? Read This Before You Get Scammed!' — which was upvoted to 45+ by locals and expats who see it every month. The trick is particularly effective on solo male travelers in their 20s and 30s. Some victims report trying to dispute via WeChat Pay and finding themselves completely stuck, since the bar is technically a real establishment and you technically 'agreed' to order.

It's 1am. You've just cleared customs at Pudong after 30+ hours of travel. You follow the signs to the official taxi rank, skip all the touts as you've been told, and get into a purple taxi from the legitimate queue. You're doing everything right. The driver asks about your destination. Then midway through the drive, mentions the fare will be ¥600. Something feels off but you're exhausted. When you arrive, the meter reads precisely ¥600 — but a normal late-night ride from Pudong to a central hotel should be ¥150–250. A parent's experience documented on r/travelchina: their elderly mother, alone at 2am, was taken on a circuitous route and told to pay ¥450 — she haggled to ¥400 but was frightened throughout. The driver had never turned the meter on. Even 'official' taxis can have rigged meters or dishonest drivers. The safest option is DiDi, where the price is set before you ride and both driver and passenger are tracked. The Maglev is also fast and honest, taking you from the airport to Longyang Road station in 8 minutes for ¥50.

You wander into a bar after dinner — it looks trendy, a bit upscale, but not outrageously so. A hostess seats you and suggests a bottle of wine or champagne. The menu prices look high but manageable. What you don't know is that the bottle you ordered is a ¥5,000 item, or that there's a 'table minimum' of ¥3,000 that was never mentioned, or that the 'complimentary' snacks that appeared will cost ¥800. One Redditor on r/travelchina paid over ¥5,000 for champagne in a Shanghai bar scam — they'd read about it happening in Japan and Thailand but couldn't research it once inside China due to the firewall blocking Google. 'I paid out of fear,' they wrote. In other documented cases, the bar's bouncers and staff create an implicit threat if customers resist paying the inflated total. The scam is so well-established that r/travelchina has it pinned in travel warnings. The venues often operate semi-legitimately — they're real bars, the prices are technically on the menu in very small print — but the entire setup is engineered to extract maximum money from tourists who don't know better.

You're heading into Shanghai Disneyland when someone near the entrance flags you down. They're offering a 'VIP internal fast pass' — ¥800 per person, no queues for 8 major rides, plus a private guide and the best fireworks spot. It sounds almost too good. It is. A Redditor posted a detailed account on r/travelchina: the 'fast entry' turned out to be the same public entrance as everyone else. At every major ride, the guide directed them to stand in the regular queue for 30–40 minutes. When confronted, the guide claimed he was 'saving them time navigating.' The ¥800 bought nothing that wasn't free. When they requested a refund, the guide's demeanor shifted sharply and he refused. Total loss: ¥1,600 for two people. Shanghai Disney's official Lightning Lane passes must be purchased inside the park through the official app. No external 'special channel' or 'internal connection' for fast passes exists — anyone claiming otherwise outside the gates is running a scam.

You're near Yu Garden when two young women approach — they're students practicing English and would love to chat. They suggest a nearby traditional tea ceremony to experience authentic Chinese culture. It sounds wonderful. Inside the teahouse, you're treated to an elaborate performance of tea preparation while the host explains the history of each variety. Then the bill arrives: ¥2,000 for what you thought was a cultural experience. Each tiny cup of tea is priced individually at ¥200+, and the 'tasting set' you were given includes six varieties. The women who invited you have conveniently stepped outside. You're alone with staff who speak very little English except the word 'pay.' This is nearly identical to the Beijing art student scam but specifically uses tea culture as the hook — which works particularly well on travelers genuinely interested in Chinese traditions. It's one of the most consistently reported tourist scams in Shanghai on multiple subreddits and travel forums.

You've heard about Shanghai's famous underground markets where you can buy surprisingly good knockoff goods at low prices. You find one, select a bag that looks perfect — genuine-looking stitching, solid hardware, the right logo. The vendor quotes ¥500 and after some haggling you settle on ¥350. But when you get back to your hotel and open the bag properly, it's not the same item you inspected. The vendor swapped it during the wrapping process — the zippers are cheap plastic, the lining is thin, the logo is crooked. Or the 'genuine leather' shoes you bought have cracked after one day. Or the sunglasses lens fall out the first time you put them on. This is a low-grade annoyance compared to Shanghai's serious scams, but it affects a huge number of tourists and is reliably reported on r/shanghai and r/travelchina. The advice: always inspect your exact item after it's wrapped, in the shop, before money changes hands. Never let the vendor take the item to 'pack it.'

You land at Pudong and need a SIM card immediately — you need maps, you need to contact your accommodation, you need DiDi. A person near the arrivals gate offers to help. They have SIM cards right there. ¥300 for a card with data. You're tired, it's convenient, and you pay. The official carrier shops inside the airport sell the same cards for ¥50–100. The vendors near the exit are simply reselling at massive markup, sometimes with SIM cards that aren't properly registered (which is required in China under real-name registration rules) and may stop working after a day. This is a low-danger scam financially — you're not losing thousands — but it's a reliable first-day annoyance that many travelers report. The official China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom counters are inside the terminal before you exit arrivals.