Some stuff from my blog when I went travelling. I am so much wiser now. TLDR is at the bottom.
On day 2 in China, Craig and I decided to check out Wangfujing Street, part of Jinbao Street. Here we could find the famous night market and general souvenir tat you’d see in any big city. The market opens at 17:30, we left at 15:30 so we had some time to kill. As we were making a slow walk along a main street, we were approached by two late teens, Uni looking students. They asked us if we were from England, we said yes and complimented them on how well they spoke English. They said they had studied at Uni and were now concentrating on art. They happened to be going to their art exhibition they had going that day and wondered if we wanted to take a look. Knowing we still had 2 hours before the market opened, we decided to take a look at their art work. They lead us a little further and eventually into a building which could easily pass for an exhibition. Security guard at the door, travel agencies and so on. It looked legit. We got into the room where dozens of pieces of artwork were displayed, typical Chinese hanging art, the stuff glued to bamboo and stuck to silk. They told us how they had to go on location during 4 different seasons to get the best shots of the place which happened to be the Great Wall, and some waterfall. Craig and I thought they would be great gifts for someone at home considering we had met the artists (each had their own ‘unique stamp’) and they had told us all about the paintings. They were also just small enough to fit into our backpacks.
We paid 100yuan each, about £10 or so. As I handed over the money he gave it straight to the guy sitting at his computer, they said all money they make from the exhibition had to go to their teacher/tutor…
I became suspicious but not enough to question it yet. Before we left he helped arrange a Great Wall tour for us (which turned out to be amazing and at a discounted rate, but that’s another story) at a ‘student’ discount. As he got his ‘student’ card out I noticed the name on it was western (something like Terry, easier for tourists to pronounce I guess) and he had the heading ‘TRANSLATOR’ so clearly it wasn’t his student card, but a business card. He assured us it was a student card. Again alarm bells started ringing, but very faintly…
We said goodbye and left. As we got out I looked at the building and said to Craig, “it doesn’t look very studenty does it?” we carried on and found the market. As we were browsing we came across a guy selling paintings. “150 yuan!” he shouted to us. We quickly looked at his stuff just out of interest, and in the corner spotted the same painting we had just bought from the students…I had that horrible sinking feeling along with butterflies in my stomach, had we just been scammed!? I thought we were brighter than that. Quickly we found a quiet spot and opened up the rolled up painting and quickly discovered they had been legitimately painted, but onto a printing, rushed and inaccurate.
We headed straight back to the ‘exhibition’ and luckily found the two fools standing by the entrance of the lift. Not wanting to cause a stir I told them we were very sorry but we were disappointed to find exactly the same paintings in the market. They refunded us straight away.
I think we were extremely lucky that they had decided to stick around for a while, any later and we would have never found them again.
A lucky escape.
Happy we had our money back we relaxed a bit and continued back to the market, determined to try scorpion or some other weird insect on a stick! As we were walking we were approached by two attractive girls, about our age. They asked us if we spoke English, where we were from and where we were going etc, and eventually offered to show us around the market. Great we thought, some locals to show us around. They told us about traditions of the market, what’s good to eat, what’s not and even bought some scorpion for us to sample. After a while they asked if we wanted to get a drink with them, who wouldn’t?
Just down the road we came across a quiet café/bar and said we’ll just have 1 beer as we haven’t got that much money to spend. Although 4 euros isn’t much for a beer in England, it’s pretty expensive here. After getting to know them a bit better, snacks were brought through and we chatted a bit more. “More beer they asked?” “No thanks” we said. After 20 minutes or so (they had ordered themselves a few juices in between, no more alcohol for them after they had had only 1 beer, they weren’t on a budget, odd?) they asked if we’d like to try a pot of Jasmine tea. Craig and I hadn’t sampled that particular tradition yet, and how expensive could a pot of tea shared between 4 people be? So we said yeah, why not.
After a bit more chatting they expressed their interest in Karaoke and how well they could sing. Come and watch they said. So we were lead off to a Karaoke room where after we refused red wine, they sung song after song, always wanting us to join in. Craig and I looked at each other as I signalled the money sign to him, we both knew we were in the middle of some sort of scam. I suppose we had subconsciously known all along by refusing the drinks. We just didn’t know how to walk away once we had been roped in.
We made some excuse about needing to get back to our hotel, and would like to pay up. “would you like to go for dinner later then?” they asked. Nope. We wanted to see what this little adventure had cost us. For a pot of tea, 4 beers, 2 juices, 2 “snacks” (peanuts) and the use of the Karaoke machine (which was never explained to us) the total came to 1400 yuan, about £155…this was over about 30 minutes or so. That would mean mine and Craig’s beers cost us £38.75 each!
Knowing it was a scam thoughts came into my head like, will they lock the door and not let us out, who are they calling every time they got their mobiles out, and will there be 5 guys with baseball bats waiting to ‘escort’ us to an ATM? We got into a slightly heated conversation about how it wasn’t explained that every single item brought through had an extortionate price attached to it. Eventually I started getting up and looking as though I was leaving after explaining this isn’t what we agreed to. We settled on paying 100yuan between us. About 15yuan more than we had originally wanted to pay for the 1 beer, so we were only out of pocket 1 euro or so.
We handed over the cash and hastily made our getaway, noticing the two guys sitting just inside the doorway dressed in all black leathers.
After this scam had happened and we’re luckily talked our way out of a 1400yuan bill, we have been approached again by 3 or 4 more women. Some on their own, some in pairs. All start out with the phrase “where you from?” – a little bit more streetwise we ignored their approaches.
As I write this I feel a bit stupid, it seems so obvious on paper. But when you’re out there, on your second day in a strange country, it’s very easy to get sucked into.
After reading up on the internet, both of these are very common scams, something Craig and I didn’t do any research on. The only reason why we had alarm bells ringing on scam no2 was because of the TV show, The Real Hustle.
Lesson learnt!
TLDR: Scam one. students try to sell us fake paintings. Scam two, Chinese girls try to fleece us on night out.
