Originally Posted by PTravel

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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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.