That is the ultimate question we keep asking ourselves being here in China – who can we trust. The simple answer is …absolutely nobody. It seems like so many people are out to scam us in some way. We’ve narrowly avoided the “tea” and “art exhibition” scams, where college kids come up to you being all friendly and interested since you’re from America, and ask if you want to join them for tea. Next thing you know you’ve just purchased a $100 cup of tea from their friends shop. Or take you to see their art school and, once there, by some of their art. The only problem is, it’s the same art knock offs sold on the street just for ten times as much. We of course had our friend Jennathan to thank for warning us against this one (after she fell victim to both). Jason’s method of pretending to be Swedish seems to keep the street hustlers at bay.

It doesn’t end there though. Even the concierges at the hotels want to sell you on certain tours, or restaurants b/c everyone gets a piece of the profit. The Sofitel Xi’an recommended a tour to the Terracotta Warriors that was one big tourist trap, stopping at various “craft sites” so that we could sample some of the local wares, aka buy some junky stuff. We were even led to believe at one point that we were at a special factory that was restoring the original Terracotta Warriors, since most of them were in ruins when discovered – however, we came to realize 20 minutes into the tour they were just trying to sell replicas of the figures (check out the video to see our moment of this realization!) and had absolutely nothing to do with the warriors.

By the time we actually got to the Terracotta Warriors, along with thousands of other people, it was hard to really enjoy them (not to mention I think that China has built them up into an over rated tourist phenomenon to make $$$$!) They’re interesting and it’s quite amazing how recently they were discovered, but there’s way too much hutz and futz to make the whole experience happen.

Some of the cheating and scamming we’ve experienced is actually more blatant and in our faces, since we have no recourse in many situations since very few people speak any English (Jason has mentioned several times not wanting to end up in a Chinese prison like Jack Bauer from his favorite show 24).

For example, people have skimmed out amounts of change that we were supposed to receive once we’ve paid for items or admissions into parks. The second night we were at the street market in Beijing the piece of pineapple I bought seemed strangely to be double the amount the local person before me paid, and was clearly a rip off – the smirky girl chuckling with her friend also gave evidenced to that! And if you do happen to find a restaurant with a menu in “English”, you can be sure that the “English” prices are about 10 times what the locals pay.

A major slap in the face was when we had paid a lot of money to get a private car to travel to the Great Wall (of course arranged by our hotel), only to come and realize when we arrived that another couple from our hotel had paid the same amount to also hire a private car – nice of the hotel to let us know we were both going to the same place, on the same day, and doing the exact same trek and maybe recommend we take a car together (considering we were both down at the concierge desk together unbeknownst to each other arranging this). On top of that, once we returned from our all day excursion our driver tried to get an extra 100 yuan from us (and we also heard that the other driver tried to get an extra 40 yuan from the other couple, Jake and Kath) by saying it was for “bridge tolls”.

The most frustrating situation was today at the local pharmacy while buying some necessities, the store literally doubled the price of an item by claiming the price was the one on the top shelf verses the logical one on the bottom shelf (we thought $10 for a TINY bottle of sunscreen was steep).

 

We’ve just felt much more on alert being here in China and it certainly has colored our experience of this country. I guess I have a sense of what being a full fledged paranoia is about, since this is how we approach our days – who’s going to try and get us next!?!?

 

That aside, there are some positive aspects of the country. The food is cheap and good most of the time. The taxi’s are really inexpensive, however it’s literally a gamble whether you’ll make it to your destination alive b/c the insanity of the driving here. The Great Wall is truly remarkable. At this point in our travels, I’m sad to say that’s all I have positive to say. Hopefully we get a different feeling by the end of our time here when we get to a more “western” city like Shanghai!