China Scam Count: Grifters 3, Us 4

Please don’t get me wrong. I love China.

But, over the last couple of weeks, it’s really felt as though China’s not loving me back.

It’s about the scams, really. For which China is, it appears, particularly in Beijing, Shanghai and the tourist centres, considerably worse than Thailand and at LEAST as bad as Vietnam.

There folk will barefacedly deny that the boat in front of you exists, or claim that the hotel they have delivered you to, despite all evidence to the contrary, is the one that you wanted to go to.

But I’m feeling a little shamefaced about all this, really. After almost two years in Asia, surely I should be a little smarter.

But, frankly, when to get to door of the Apple Store in Beijing you have to fight your way through a wall of guys selling fake iPhones, and when the National Museum of China has an exhibition sponsored by BVLGARI next door to one created by the Propaganda Division of the People’s Liberation Army, you realise that state capitalism makes for a million sorts of crazy

Anywise: here are some common Chinese scams I DIDN’T fall for…

FAKE ART EXHIBITIONS

It’s hard to approach the Forbidden City without being assailed by young “students” whose college is allegedly hosting an art exhibition. Should you go, you will be treated to some combination of high-pressure selling of commercial artworks, a studio entrance fee, and dinner or tea at a place with no prices on the menu, where you will be stranded with a bill for hundreds of pounds.

How to Avoid The Art Exhibition Scam: Don’t go to art exhibitions with strangers. Check the English language media for news of what’s on.

THE FAKE TICKET SCAM

Scalping is a sort of bizarre mania in mainland China, and fake ticket vendors can demonstrate the persistence and creativity that made China the size it is today.

Entire travel agencies have been set up, in some instances, just to sell expensive tours and rail tickets, and then disappear.

The guys selling “tickets” outside the waterpark in the Olympic Water Cube followed us for hundreds of metres, virtually thrusting them into our hands. So, for that matter, did the guy selling completely unnecessary swim hats.

Probably the prize for randomness, however, goes to the chap in Shanghai who insisted that we buy fake passes for an exhibition of (no kidding) Japanese marine engineering equipment. Which, obviously, we TOTALLY looked like we wanted to buy.

How to Avoid the Fake Ticket Scam: Don’t buy attraction tickets on the street: look for the formal ticket office. If you want to buy plane tickets online, go for a reputable agency like ctrip.com. Buy train tickets from a dedicated train ticket reseller, the station or your hotel.

THE TAXI SCAM

At every railway station, bus station and airport in China, we’ve been greeted at the gate by folk, often wearing official-looking badges, offering to provide us with taxis. Funnily enough, these cost two to five times as much as the metered taxis in the orderly rank outside every station.

How to Avoid the Taxi Scam: Follow the signs to the taxi queue. They are well organised and move a lot faster than you’d think.

THE BAR FIGHT SCAM

I am not sure whether bar fights are started deliberately to extort money in China, but extortion tends to follow soon after. Should you become embroiled in a bar fight as a Westerner in China, you can expect to be sued in a civil court and/or deported. For obvious reasons, this normally targets the chaps, not the girls.

How to Avoid the Bar Fight Scam: Avoid hitting on Chinese girls or hitting anyone Chinese. End of.

And here – and I must confess I am embarrassed by this – are the scams that I did fall for.

Why? Well, firstly the vast majority of Chinese people have been incredibly sweet, friendly, helpful and interested in us – more particularly, my son – which means my guard has been down.

Secondly, I’m British so, I think, concerned about being polite. And thirdly, I guess, because the rest of South-East Asia has softened me.

THE TEA SCAM

The tea scam is the absolute classic Chinese scam, probably the best known of the bunch. And, you know what? We (both of us) knew about it too. And we STILL fell for it.

The classical format goes as follows. A couple of girls who want to practice their English befriend you and invite you for tea. There are no prices on the menu. At the end of the evening, you are presented with an enormous bill (I’ve heard of them running into the hundreds of pounds) and threatened if you don’t pay.

We got grifted in Wangfujing, Beijing’s answer to Oxford Street, sitting over dumplings in a cheap restaurant in a mall, fresh from dropping thousands of yuan on a PowerBook.

Two girls fell into conversation with us – complimenting Z on his use of chopsticks – and it emerged that one was a high school history teacher. We talked about Chinese history, where she explained, quite plausibly, for example, that Empress Wu Zetian’s role has been reevaluated…

We finished our meal. They finished theirs. The “high school teacher” suggested we join them for a coffee, because she liked speaking English with English people.

Feeling guilty about turning down a meal with Martin, our guide in Songpan, and wanting to find out a bit more about schools in China, I went with them. Though as we left the mall, for an anonymous alley, I felt progressively less comfortable with every step and hugged my bag like a demon.

In the teahouse, there was a menu, with prices that were steep – equivalent to a 5* hotel – but not completely ludicrous, particularly not when you’ve just spent thousands of yuan on a computer.

As we were upgraded from the entry level unlimited pot of tea at 200 yuan to unlimited “Dragon Well” tea at 300 yuan, my mind constantly ticked over whether this was, or wasn’t, the tea scam.

At the end, I paid the bill – despite knowing that in Chinese etiquette the person who invites you pays the bill! – and left pondering whether we’d been scammed.

“Well,” said Z, when I ran it by him. “They DO say two girls looking to practise their English . . .”

Back at base, I remarked to a Dutch guy that we’d just had an extremely expensive pot of tea. “Were you on Wangfujing?” he asked. “Yeah,” I said. “That happened to me there five years ago,” he said. “Cost me about 30 euros.”

How to Avoid the Tea Scam: Don’t go for drinks or food with Chinese people unless you know them well.

THE FAKE NOTE SCAM

Buying cheap goods in China, or taking change, one needs to be on the qui vive not just for short changing but for the multifarious fake notes. So, when a chick selling People’s Liberation Army hats outside the Summer Palace in Beijing passed me a 50 so different from the ones I’d seen that it HAD to be a forgery in my change, I objected.

She gave me 100 back. Unfortunately, THAT was also transparently different from the note I’d given her. We argued for a while, Z chiming in quite heatedly, with her opening her wallet to show only notes identical to the ones she had given me, and a young kid keeping an eye open for police.

Why didn’t I call for the police? Well, firstly I wasn’t entirely sure the note was fake, because it seemed so different from the traditional Chairman Maos that it would be odd to pass it as a fake (it was, in fact, a commemorative note). Secondly, we had limited time to see the Summer Palace.

And, thirdly, because my Chinese is still pretty rubbish. And if she had turned round to the police and said that I had passed HER the fake, things might have turned very ugly indeed.

How to Avoid the Fake Note Scam: Carry enough change to pay the right sum for whatever you buy. Be very cautious if someone drops their price too easily on haggling. They’re likely to make their money back on a fake note.

THE BROKEN GOODS SCAM

Many street vendors in China source their toys from the quality testing division of factories – the ones that have failed to pass muster and should have been destroyed. Most will have one version of the real toy that works, which they use for demonstrations.

The same, of course, goes for electronics: it’s not uncommon to sell hard drives or other kit that look and weigh exactly the same as the real thing (not to mention the functional demonstration model) but are full of scrap metal instead.

How to Avoid the Broken Goods Scam: Don’t buy electronics on the street. If buying toys, insist on testing the one you buy.

29 Responses

  1. Talon says:

    Sounds exhausting really. I hate having to be so incredibly on guard like that. Just really dulls the experience for me.

    Thanks for the info, though. Hope to go there some day and feel better prepared for the scams.

    • MaryAnne says:

      It’s not that exhausting when you’re living here full time- I’ve actually been hit by none of these in the 3 years we’ve been here and it’s not because I’m somehow more hardened and tough than she is. These scams are maybe just in tourist areas, for things tourists do. We have been okay in our travels around China so far but maybe we’re just lucky– or maybe we’re such solitary hermits that we have stopped engaging in unwanted conversations and participating in anything that involves other people… 🙂

      • Theodora says:

        I think, MaryAnne, as we discussed, that it’s a combination of a) me going to more tourist areas (Forbidden City, Summer Palace, etc.) than you and b) me being more used to harmless strangers talking to us, because I’m travelling with Z. The tea house thing was just stupid of me, though. I think I felt guilty for having turned down a legitimate invitation to dinner and felt I should somehow make it up…

    • Theodora says:

      I think it’s pretty much condensed to the tourist areas of Beijing and Shanghai, and some tourist cities. IN Kunming, Chengdu, even Xi’an, we didn’t hit any problems…

  2. Sally says:

    Wow, I didn’t know the bar fight thing was actually a scam. It makes sense though. I know 2 Western guys who ended up in bar fights & had to shell out lots of cash to ward off having the guys press charges. I just thought these were isolated cases. Obviously, I don’t have the mind of mastermind scammer.
    I guess I’ve been pretty lucky so far as I haven’t been scammed yet — aside from being charged way too much for a few taxi rides (but that kind of comes with the territory in Asia). Actually this probably has a lot less to do with luck and a lot more to do with the fact that I spend most of my time on my couch.

    • Theodora says:

      I think it’s also about coming from nice smaller Chinese cities to the maelstrom that is Beijijng tourist bits and Shanghai tourist bits. You become a lot more trusting than you would be if you walked straight into it…

  3. dani says:

    My friend actually got out of the Tes Scam on his trip to China. 2 girls in China invited him to a bar, where they wanted to speak english, then ordered a bottle of wine.

    He happened to glance at the menu as they ordered and see the bottle was 600 ($ or yuan, dont know).

    He excused himself to use the bathroom then snuck out the door before the wine even arrived.

    • Theodora says:

      That was probably a wise exit. The ones on our menu were north of 900 yuan. But I think I”d have reacted if someone ordered wine. At least, I hope I would…

  4. Lauren says:

    I fell for the tea scam too, despite also being completely aware of it… The fact that they invest so much time in the beginning talking to you means that you really let your guard down.

    It’s stressful and exhausting when everyone’s trying to scam you and it really affected my opinion of China.

    • Theodora says:

      I only really found the scams/sales stuff stressful in Beijing and Shanghai. Kunming, Chengdu, Xi’an, Lijiang, Songpan were all completely fine. And by Hong Kong I was sort of used to aggressive sales tactics.

  5. Dave says:

    Unfortunately it’s always a dicey road trusting the locals in a foreign country when you’re an obvious foreigner. And simply going on your gut doesn’t always work especially when you’re up against a great actor.

    Thanks for the heads up.
    Dave

  6. eva hamori says:

    I had no idea. And so many guarded people still get scammed. They have mastered the art of the scam. WOW!

    Safe Travels!

    • Theodora says:

      I think China does breed good grifters. Also, obviously, there’s a lot of people in each city…

  7. James Cook says:

    I was surprised that there were so many scams. The only ones you really hear about are the Tea Scam and the Art Scam.

    • Theodora says:

      Well, travelling with a small boy around his birthday time means you do buy a lot of plastic goods…Or more than most might, anyway. At least he didn’t buy the “iPhone”…

  8. Thankfully I managed 3 years in Vietnam and a few weeks in China without falling victim to any scams but you are right about having to be on your guard to these things!

    I was approached in China outside the Forbidden City by an ‘Art Student’ and thankfully I refused because I’m not really into paintings (sometimes it pays to be uncultured!) it is only now when I read this that I realise I avoided a scam! He was very persistent and charming, saying he just wanted to practise his English.

    Another time in China a man came up to us and demanded 500 Yuan. He didn’t even bother to pretend that it was for anything!

    Thanks for the advice – it’s always good to know what to look out for!

    • Theodora says:

      Just demanding 500 yuan? That seems very unChinese… I think you got lucky with the art scam, though.

  9. Steph says:

    It’s so interesting- I’ve read a million things on the tea scam and I am still constantly hearing about people who get roped into it! I luckily avoided it when I was in China (mostly by being high suspicious of anyone who approached me sadly) but I know so many people who’ve fallen for it. They must make a killing.

    The amount of scammers in China was annoying but after about a month there I found them very easy to avoid. They are mostly non-existant outside of the major tourist areas. Most chinese people I met were pretty friendly and eager for us to have a good impression of their country.

    • Theodora says:

      I think we travelled in the opposite direction to most people, Steph. In that we started in an untouristy place, so only got hit with the scams towards the end of our stay. And I’m 100% with you that the vast majority of Chinese people are incredibly kind, friendly and helpful.

  10. Gray says:

    It’s pretty sad that tourists have to constantly be on guard to avoid being scammed. And of course, this is true everywhere around the world where tourists gather, not just China. But no matter how much your guard is up, there’s always going to be that one time when you’re tired or the scammer is particularly good at what they do. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that you may have gotten caught up in this because your background has taught you to be polite. That’s a common problem for many of us, and scammers count on it.

    • Theodora says:

      I’d agree with you, Gray, that scammers do rely on politeness, and, generally, good nature (not to mention one’s less good-natured side as well: one of the things I think tea scammers do is flatter you). It’s certainly not specific to China. I think it happens all over the world. But in the tourist areas of Beijing and Shanghai if you’re not Chinese you are visibly a tourist, therefore a mark.

  11. i had no idea, either – and it DOES sound exhausting. cripes.

  12. Toni says:

    It sounds truly exhausting having to try and be on guard 24/7 against all these scams with the possibility that you will still fall victim to them :s
    All I can say is ‘YIKES’ and I’m sorry you got stung Theodora!

    • Theodora says:

      Thanks for your kind words, much appreciated. It’s actually not the money so much as the feeling of stupidity that goes with it that stung for a bit. But it still doesn’t stop me loving China like a crazy person…

  13. Linda says:

    I have a random work of art somewhere in my collection of “stuff” that I acquired as a result of practising English with a Chinese student in Guilin! Guardian angels must have been watching over me when I accompanied her to her rather remote village two bus rides, a taxi ride and a hike away from the city! Yes, it was foolhardy but I sure enjoyed the adventure!