Originally Posted by
Mannequin
Good on you for letting them know you were on to them. Hopefully the more people start to let them know that they realize this is a scam, the more it will start to die down. After being in China, you learn to ask about the price for everything before agreeing to anything. Even the price of a bottle of juice at a restaurant. When I was in Xian eating at a famous dumpling restaurant, the waitress asked me if I wanted some juice. I said yes without thinking about it, because I thought it was just going to be a cup of juice. She came back to the table with a bottle of imported fruit juice and opened it really quickly. Once I saw the bottle I started to ask how much it was, but she opened it before I could even get the words out. Turns out it was 40 RMB, (about $6 USD), and a complete ripoff! I checked the menu, and it was actually posted on there at that price, so they weren't being dishonest, but she chose the most expensive thing on the menu and quickly made it so that it couldn't be changed. I had to chalk it up to a lesson learned. Before agreeing to anything, ALWAYS ask the price and make sure ALL parties involved understand the agreed price. Sometimes you negotiate a price for something, and then the person you negotiated with hands you off to someone else who is actually going to perform the service. In that case, absolutely make sure that the new person is also on board with the agreed price. It's amazing how many lessons one is taught by spending an amount of time in China, lol.
I don't know that this was a scam, so much as assumptions on the part of the waitress about what foreigners want. Wait staff aren't tipped in China -- they simply are paid a salary, and it's unrelated to how much food or drink they sell.
Though not directly related to your post, I recently responded to a post about the tea house scam in another thread (oddly enough, the one about Istanbul scams). I'm going to re-post it here because I think it explains something about what westerners often perceive as scams:
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Originally Posted by marklyon
Often wondered if I was being scammed in Beijing.
Was traveling with my wife and mother-in-law to see the Forbidden City. There is an outer courtyard area where you buy tickets, etc. I was waiting with my mother-in-law while my wife went to buy tickets.
A relatively young and polite college-age girl came up to me and introduced herself. She asked if I had been to the Forbidden City before, and whether I needed a guide. I told her that I was with two other people who had been many times and would be showing me the sights, but I thanked her for offering. She gave me her card (inkjet printed on flimsy stock) and said that if I knew anyone looking for a guide in the future, that I should tell them about her and that they could email to make arrangements. I thanked her and, seeing the odd looks coming from my mother-in-law (who doesn't speak English), thought that was the end of it.
Of course, the line for tickets is very long. So I'm just standing there and waiting and the girl asks MIL something and then translates for me and before I know it she's showing us a good place to wait that actually has a place to sit and some shade. I end up talking with the girl in English for a bit - she was a language major at one of the local colleges but realized that she had a good foundation in the languages and would have an easier time improving her skills by simply practicing. The guide gig paid reasonably well and gave her an opportunity to do that.
We talked about how the guide thing worked. There was someone above her that she had to pay off each day to not get hassled at the Forbidden City, but the fee was reasonable and it was a good place to pick up people. Usually she would get engaged for someone's entire visit and end up taking them to see the whole city. She knew some good deals on other day trips, etc and could set them up for customers. For the most part, once she had someone, she got to spend the day driving around in Taxis, eating at good restaurants and going to museums, temples and other cultural sites all on their dime.
She offered some suggestions about where to go eat, since the duck place my MIL wanted to visit was closed for renovations (we actually went to the place she wanted and confirmed that it was closed). All in all, very pleasant and helpful.
Then my wife showed up with the tickets and three electronic audio guides, saying that it'd been a long time since she had been and that the guides would be helpful. The girl looked a bit hurt, but took a moment to show me that if we went in an order other than suggested by the guide, we would actually have a better trip, since all of the good stuff is at the beginning of the suggested path, not the end.
But, I've wondered if this might have actually been a scam. The story was probably BS and had I been alone and receptive, I'm sure I would have been overpaying for the helpful companion. Might have been fun, though. She did seem to know her way around the city.
It's a scam only to this extent: there are licensed guides at the Forbidden City and, from what you're describing, this girl wasn't one. If you had hired her, I suspect you would have paid a reasonable fee and given a nice tour of the Forbidden City.
The whole guide/tea house thing has evolved from two very legitimate activities: guides and tea tasting. China, and particularly Beijing, is a lot more tourist-friendly now then, say, fifteen or twenty years ago. Then, few signs were in English and, particularly for western tourists, China could be a somewhat confusing place to visit. Through the 70s and 80s, there were official guides -- state employees whose primary job was to keep tabs on foreign visitors, but who would navigate the environs for visitors. As China has become more comfortable with western visitors, it has become a lot easier for them to get around on their own, certainly no more difficult than visiting any other country with a different language, culture and customs.
Chinese culture is heavily entrepreneurial. When Deng took over after Mao died, and said the two most important things for China, "To be wealthy is glorious," and, "Any cat that catches mice is a good cat," it was like uncorking a bottle of champagne that had been shook up. After 50 years of a near slave-like commitment to a dictatorial communism, the Chinese people were suddenly free to better their stations and keep the fruits of their own labor. This resulted in a veritable explosion of grass-roots capitalism which is still evident. If you thought that people visiting the Temple of Heaven might enjoy roasted yams, you got yourself a cart, put a charcoal cooker on it, got a bag of yams, parked yourself at the exit and started selling them. The yam sellers are still there (and those yams are delicious!). The same is true with unlicensed guides, who you will find at all the major tourist attractions.
As for tea tasting, this has always been a legitimate activity in China. For example, my wife, who is Chinese and spent the first 27 years of her life in China, and I visited Lijiang, an ancient city in Yunan province that became famous in China when Jiang Ymou, a famous Chinese film director best known in the west for Raise the Red Lantern, used it as a location in one of his period pictures. It has since become an extremely popular tourist destination . . . but for Chinese, far more than for foreign visitors. There are a couple of well-preserved ancient villages in the Lijiang area, and my wife and I visited them as well. At one of them, we went to a tea shop for a tea tasting. The Lijiang area is famous for a special kind of tea called Pu'er. Pu'er is made by fermenting tea leaves and has a very distinctive taste (not one I care for, but my wife liked it). Our tea tasting was conducted by the proprietor of the tea shop, who prepared 6 or 8 different teas, including Pu'er, in the traditional manner (which, in itself was interesting for me, though less so, of course, for my wife), explaining in great detail how each variety was cultivated, the distinctive characteristics of each, what were the benefits of each (Chinese teas are part of an holistic approach to health and treating illness, with different teas targeting different physical ailments), and pointing out the subtle differences in color, flavor, aftertaste, etc. The tea shop proprietor spent a good hour or so with us, for which we paid the pre-agreed price of 400 rmb for the two of us (if I remember correctly), which covered the cost of the teas and the proprietor's time. Afterward, we bought some teas that we particularly liked. Bear in mind, as well, that, in China, the cost of tea varies wildly, depending on the variety. There are teas in China for which the Chinese pay the equivalent of $1,000 USD per pound or more.
The tea tasting that we attended near Liajiang was an absolutely legitimate activity and is, by no means, unique to that area. Many tea shops in China offer the same service (we also attended one in Guilin many years ago), and virtually all of them will prepare sample teas. It is not surprising, therefore, that entrepreneurial tea house owners in Beijing, which is probably the number one destination for foreign visitors, recognized tea tasting as a viable way to earn money and increase sales. It is only a small step from offering tea tasting to sending "cappers" out to bring in customers -- remember, there is no shortage of labor in China and hiring extra workers for this purpose requires a very minimal investment. That this ultimately evolved, for some, but not for all, into the "tea house scam," is entirely predictable. This, by the way, is the reason that so many who fall victim to the scam do not realize, until later, that they have scammed. This particular scam (and the guides, and the "art students") is, for the most part, not done with the same predatory cynicism that characterizes, for example, the jewelery scam in Thailand, the not-really-Italian Italian Armani salesman scam throughout Europe, the money changer scams in Prague, the buy-the-nice-bar-girl-a-drink scam in Amsterdam, and so on. It is really just over-reaching on the part some entrepreneurial Chinese who have pushed a good and legitimate idea too far.
That said, the cardinal rules for avoiding being scammed in China are these: (1) Always agree on a price up front, and (2) always bargain. A tea tasting, done right, is a fun and interesting experience. Of course, done wrong as part of a scam, it's mostly a waste of time and, if it's being done "secretly," as in the case of the well-known scam, it is most likely to be the latter. Though a guide really isn't necessary at the Forbidden City (or anywhere else in China), one can add to the experience of a first-time visitor, particularly if one is uncomfortable translating a very different culture into terms that one can understand.
Hope this helps.