 | Beijing Tour Scams Reviews | Tips 1 - 10 of 29 |  |
 | |  |  | Tour Scams: China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine. | Tip Rating:   |  |  | |  |
The tour I took made a quick and unscheduled stop on the way back from the Ming tombs. Every tour takes you someplace as part of a paid advertising thing. Most of the time it is "the Marco Polo store" where you have lunch and do a little shopping. That I am ok with. this trip was different. We stopped by the China Academy of Traditional Cinese Medicine, Imperial Family Expert Clinic and Tong Ren Tang Pharmacy. We were taken down a long hall and shown into a little room where we were given an explanation of traditional chinese medicine. Then we were taken to another room where a guy tapped on our wrists and looked deep into my eyes and told me that I drank too much and had a bad liver. Soon, I was prescribed two bottles of little pills that looked like peppercorns or rabit raisins, and bearing the taste of an equivalent of the later. Not being a big drinker, an occasional beer when I eat Korean food, I was a bit skeptical. I was soon given 2 bottles and told that this clinic had been the one to serve all the leaders of China, including Mao, and that it would be an insult not to buy them. I was soon out 20 bucks. My friend came out and amazingly enough had the exact same liver problems. Funny, he never drinks.
If you get stuck going there, just try to hide out in the hall, or politely decline the examination when offered. That will save you a world of trouble later on.
Most of the time, the driver for the tours hangs out in the bus. Tell the tour guide that your legs are hurting and you would like to just sit in the bus and rest. Or if possible, politely tell them you are not interested and move on. Leave a Comment
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| | | | Tour Scams: The Beijing "Tea" party | Tip Rating: | | | | |
We met a very polite young woman who said that she was studying English at college and could she speak to us to see if we understood her so that she could find out how good her English was on the street. We found this innocent enough and said yes. Anyway she was a really pleasant woman and her uncle (who didn't speak English) offered through her because of our kindness towards them, to guide us through the old city (where we were heading next anyway) and we agreed. It was really interesting and he, through his niece, explained all the different remedies they used in everyday life and we spent a good hour talking with them and generally having a good time. After this experience, they had obviously got our confidence and when we were asked if we would like to see a traditional “Tea Ceremony” we jumped at the chance and were taken to a ceremonial tea house. We entered the building, and we were shown upstairs into a private room with all the ceremonial tea equipment already laid out. We were then introduced to a young girl (who spoke no English) who once again through our young Chinese interpreter, went through the ritual of the tea ceremony. To cut a long story short we had the tea ceremony and our young translator friend said that she would like to purchase some of the tea for her mother from Shanghai. So she ordered some tea and we asked for the bill through our interpreter. The young girl came back with a bill for 4,860YNB, with the exchange rate at 13.50RNB to the £1 the total cost for our simple tea ceremony was £360.00. We thought they had made a mistake and asked them to check, they replied that we were in an official government tea ceremony building with officials participating and that it was only open on special days of the week for the special ceremonies. We told them quite plainly that we didn’t have that kind of money and couldn’t pay it, we made the best out of a terrible situation gave then 1,000RNB (£74.00) and left immediately.
ADVICE TO TRAVELLER’S Before entering into any ceremony please ask the cost 1st, this is the basic mistake we made, and we have heard of others falling for this as well. Once you have a price stick to it unless you feel that an extra gratuity should be paid because of the standard or time and effort put in etc. China is a fantastic place to visit, and this was the only stumbling block we came across, so don’t be put off, just be careful. Leave a Comment
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| | | | Tour Scams: Part of just about every tour in Beijing | Tip Rating: | | | | |
This isn't so much a report of a particular tourist trap, as it is a report of what to expect as part of most of the tours available in Beijing.
When you book a tour in Beijing, you pay a one time price for the package tour. What you are not told, is the full agenda of the tour. On every tour I booked, we were taken to some tourist trap spot that pressured us to spend money. On the Great Wall tour of Badaling, we all expected the commercialism of the Wall, but we didn't expect the stopover at the Chinese School of Traditional Medicine. At first this seemed as though it would be an interesting little venue, but it quickly materialized into an obvious scam to squeeze money out of our pockets. We were all attended to by a white jacketed Traditional Medicine doctor and quite literally everyone was diagnosed with some illness.
Naturally, the Chinese School of Traditional Medicine just "happened" to have a pill for out ills! We were all offered special discount prices for the pills (seeings how we were members of this special tour) and for the most part, most of us just shrugged it off and laughed. Some people on the tour were a bit more gullible and got soaked for several thousand Yuan! Another tour I went on, detoured to some Chinese pearl shop where they really put on the pressure for you to purchase natural pearls (again at a "special" price for tour members only).... and again, on yet another tour, we were detoured to a huge Friendship Store where we ended up staying for a boring three hours and subjected to again....more high pressure sales....at special bargain prices.... Beware! Leave a Comment
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| | | | Tour Scams: Beijing Tea House Scam | Tip Rating:  | | | | |
My husband and I were leaving the Forbidden City at closing time. We were walking along when this girl started walking beside us. She started talking to us in English. She said she was visiting from another part of China. This was her first trip to Beijing. She said she worked for a German Car Company in her home town. She asked us where we were going and we said Tianianmen Square, she said so was she. As we walked along she taught us to speak some chinese, she complimented us on our pronounciation. She then asked if we wanted to go to Walking Street,(good shopping) She said it was 10 minutes walk. My Husband agreed. It is called Qianmen Street. I think, buy looking at the map. As we approached the street , I said to my Husband," Do you feel safe?" He said "Yes". Soon as we got into the street, she raced into this tea house and straight up the stairs, saying she wanted to see a tea ceremony, so we followed. My Husband stayed down stairs and then came up after a few minutes, then joined in the tea ceremony. We didn't think to ask the price as it was only a cup of tea. Eventually the bill came. What a shock! I showed it to my husband. He nearly had a fit. He stood up, he said to the girl "Do you work here?" she acted all innocent. We returned the tea we were going to buy. My Husband being the nice guy he is, paid the complete bill including the girl's bill. We were going out that night and were pushed for time so we made a quick retreat to a taxi. The con girl helped us get a taxi . My husband wasn't convinced that the girl had been in on the scam until I searched the web.***** Photo included of the two girls.
Make sure you ask the price of everything........Don't believe anything. When we questioned the price, the girl doing the ceremony bought out a price list that said the goverment made them charge this amount.
Just do your own thing, don't talk to strangers. They only want something.
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| | | | Tour Scams: The No. 2 Travelling Bus - Great Wall / Ming Tombs | Tip Rating: | | | | |
I had some friends coming to visit me so I thought I'd take them to the Great Wall. The No. 2 Travelling Bus also included the Ming Tombs, which my friend wanted to visit, so that was ok. So we arrived at the bus stop (near the main Beijing Railway Station) and chose the 'luxurious' bus to travel on for 50yuan round trip. At 9.30am we all chugged away on our sixteen seater minibus! All of a sudden, the tour guide switched on his microphone and shouted all of Beijing's history down it! This carried on for an hour! We arrived at our first destination...a desolate area of land with no-one in sight. He may as well have shouted down the microphone 'WELCOME TO THE FIRST SCAM OF THIS TOUR'! Everyone paid their 45yuan entrance fee and marched in. We refused to pay as we had no idea what it was as it was behind tall locked gates! After 10mins and out of pure insanity (or because the guide told us we could not wait in the bus if we didnt enter!), we paid the 'shark' and went in. We were presented with an english speaking guide, who deserted us after a couple of mins because she didnt, as it turns out, speak ANY English at all! We were told to peer into shop fronts which werent in fact real shops anyway, just models and then hurried along to the main event! We did eventually make it to the Wall, but only after stopping at a dried fruit wholesale store, an uninteresting part of the Ming Tombs, a highly overpriced canteen, and a jade factory four hours later!
At the first stop we went to, I really think you should stick to your guns. There is NOTHING of any value behind those tall gates, it is a complete rip-off and 'the show' was the only interesting part out of it all! Well not interesting, but different... A show, put on by the local bandits, outcasts, and just plain weirdos from that area consisted of knife swallowing, cigarette burning on the tongue, lifting bricks up just using his ear, and producing a mini silver ball once swallowed, from any hole of the man's body..lucky for us, he chose his eyeball!REALLY disgusting! And on top of that, we were made as foreigners(not the Chinese)to make a contribution afterwards! Take your own snack food! The canteen food looked awful and really was just leftovers from every restaurant in that neighbourhood I think! We refused to pay 20yuan to eat there, thinking we would wait for the Great Wall and buy a snack there. Remember...they want commission, so dont let them push you into anything you dont want to do. Of course, they took us to a part of the Wall that very few tourists visit, so there was only one shop selling crisps, so that was our lunch!
Well, like my friends and I, we just had to laugh about it. Not necessarily at the time, because it was one of Beijing's coldest days, and we were in pain, but afterwards over a nice hot meal, yes! You'll have fun when you get to the Wall, and it really will make the rest of the day fade into insignificance. There are plenty of lovely photos to take at the Wall and you'll have fun running or walking around this great area of land steeped in history! Afterall as quoted by Mao Zedong.."you are not a man unless youve climbed The Great Wall"! Leave a Comment
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