Monday 28 May
This is a difficult blogpost for me to write as no-one likes to advertise the fact that they have been stupid and gullible, but as I'm trying to write an honest blog, and the incident has affected us deeply, I have to bite the bullet and write about it. Since it happened to us, we have confided in another newly-arrived-in-Beijing couple, to warn them of the the scam. They told us they had been warned at the airport about this, but didn't realise until they met us that it really happened.
The day starts well, in our soft-sleeper train cabin, where we have an excellent conversation with the Chinese man who is sharing our cabin, as we draw near to Beijing. He doesn't speak English, but the app on his smartphone translates Chinese -English and vice versa. (Reg had a similar app on his phone until Google shut down his account without warning while we were in Kazakhstan - no doubt for security reasons), According to the internet, it's a 3 hour bureaucratic form-filling procedure to reinstsate the Google account, and Reg can't be bothered.
The Chinese man shows us where the taxi rank is at the station and we say our goodbyes. There must be 200 people waiting for a taxi; it's one of those cordoned queues, like the ones in Post Offices and some shops - so at least it's fair. We've arrived at 8.45 am, peak time - but we only have to wait 45 minutes for a taxi. Reg reads the papers on his phone, and I read my kindle, as we gradually shuffle along in the queue.
We love our hostel; it has everything we need. We are on the ground floor ( a pleasant change from our 3rd storey room in the last hostel), we can get wifi in our room, there's a lovely hot power-shower, and they serve English breakfast -what more could we want?
After breakfast, a rest, and sorting ourselves out, it's about 3 pm and we decide to go to Tiananmen Square, It's vast: in fact it's actually 2 linked squares. You have to go under an underpass to get to the square, whichever way you approach it. There is x-ray security for your bags, and police using a scanning device for your person, in the underpass. However, they are only checking Chinese people; if you are European, you are waved through.
As Reg is taking a photo of me a Chinese man, probably in his 40's, approaches Reg and asks him where he's from, and starts chatting to both of us in a friendly way. A young woman in her 20's comes forward, and the man says he's a teacher, and introduces her as his student. We don't really twig that it might be a bit odd, a teacher and just one student together seeing the sights of Beijing, when, apparently, they both live 10 hours away by train, in Xi'an, where we'd just come from.
We are used to Chinese people being friendly to us, and having a chat; it happens all the time. After a while the man asks us if we've eaten yet; we say no, we're looking for somewhere nice to eat. He says he can take us to a good place, "to eat, and perhaps share a couple of beers, if we'd like to?" We say sure, that would be good, as we've only just arrived in Beijing and don't know our way around.
Reg walks on ahead with the man, I walk behind with the girl, who says she has a bad foot. A couple of times I call out to Reg and ask them to wait for us. The girl is friendly and chatty and there's nothing suspicious about her at all.
Eventually after a long walk we are taken to a restaurant, and shown into a private room; I guess the alarm bells should have started ringing at this point but they didn't.
We spend about 45 minutes with a waitress demonstrating a tea-tasting ceremony to us; we're told it's traditional in Beijing. No costs are mentioned and we naively don't ask; generally tea is extremely cheap in China. We go through a ritual of drinking lots of different types of tea from tiny cups, and the health-givng properties of all these teas are explained to us.
After this ceremony, the Chinese man suggests we have Peking duck, as it's a speciality in Beijing; we say that would be great. Again we are gullible and naive; we don't ask to see the menu prices. At some point during the meal, which is actually very nice indeed, the man asks us if we have a car at home - is it a BMW? No, we say, it's a 10-year-old Toyota. He asks us if we have a credit card, still we don't smell a rat; we say no, we only carry a debit card with us, and some cash. But, I say, we have enough cash on us for a Chinese meal.
Finally at the end of the meal, the bill arrives - it;s 4900 yuan, about £490 pounds! Our half will be £245. We stare at the bill in shock - we only have 600 yuan on us. And our debit card. I glance at Reg, who is looking extremely uncomfortable; I say,
"Do you mean the bill is 490 yuan, not 4900?"
No, he says, 4900 yuan, Apparently, each tea-tasting ceremony for each different tea cost 45 yuan, or £4.50.
"My half of the bill is the same," says the Chinese man. "Teachers earn a good salary in China".
You would have thought that at this point we would have realised the whole thing was a scam, and have refused to pay; we can't explain why we reluctantly got out our debit card and signed to pay 2450 yuan, or £245. We are flustered, we haven't been able to discuss the bill properly in front of these people, and we aren't thinking straight.
"I want to go home now", I say to Reg.
We part from the Chinese man and girl outside the restaurant. It's still early, about 7 pm. The Chinese pair, of course, don't press us to share the rest of our evening with them. They've got what they want, and can't get away fast enough.
As we walk away, after a couple of minutes, I say to Reg,
"That whole thing was a scam - we've been set up." Reg agrees; we are both really angry. I look for my debit card receipt; they didn't give it to me, and in my flustered state and shock, I didn't notice.
"Let's go back," I say. "I want my receipt. We can go to the police".
The Chinese man and girl are nowhere to be seen; the staff are surprised to see us back. I tell them I didn't have my debit card receipt, and would like it please. They try to show us back into the private room where we had our dinner, but I say, "No, we're staying here." (In the entrance of the restaurant), The staff can sense trouble, and turn up the music, while trying to placate me, and say they'll get me my receipt. All this confirms the scam even more - no doubt there are Europeans in another room in the restaurant being similarly scammed as I speak. I don't know where I get the courage, but I say, in a loud voice,
"I want my money back. I'm willing to pay 500 yuan; but I want 2000 yuan back."
The staff are shocked. They know they've been rumbled,
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," a young man says, getting on his mobile. "Here, here, you can speak.to the boss,"
I'm speaking to a Chinese man who speaks English - I think its the "English teacher" who scammed us but I can't be sure. All this time, Reg is standing in the doorway, making sure they don't lock us inside the restaurant.
"I want 2000 yuan. And I want it now. Otherwise, I'll go to the Police."
The man asks me to hand the phone back to the young man standing near me. After a couple of minutes, the young man says I can have my money. A woman is angry; she says, "1500!" and I say no, 2000 yuan.
The young man gives me my 2000 yuan - I count it, and sign for it, and we leave the restaurant, I am shaking, We know we have been incredibly stupid and trusting and gullible, but we've learned from our mistake; DON'T EVER GO FOR A MEAL WITH PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW; DON'T GO IN A PRIVATE ROOM; MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE PRICE OF WHATEVER YOU HAVE BEFORE YOU ORDER.
Apparently, according to the couple we meet the next day, this scam happens regularly to Europeans, who are approached by practiced rogues in Tianenmen Square.
We didn't get all our money back - we paid over-the-odds for our meal, and tea-tasting (which we hadn;t asked for) at 500 yuans, or £50; but at least we minimised our losses.
The majority of Chinese people, we've found, are lovely, kind, friendly, helpful people. But this incident has affected us badly and we'll be a lot more careful in future,
This is a difficult blogpost for me to write as no-one likes to advertise the fact that they have been stupid and gullible, but as I'm trying to write an honest blog, and the incident has affected us deeply, I have to bite the bullet and write about it. Since it happened to us, we have confided in another newly-arrived-in-Beijing couple, to warn them of the the scam. They told us they had been warned at the airport about this, but didn't realise until they met us that it really happened.
The day starts well, in our soft-sleeper train cabin, where we have an excellent conversation with the Chinese man who is sharing our cabin, as we draw near to Beijing. He doesn't speak English, but the app on his smartphone translates Chinese -English and vice versa. (Reg had a similar app on his phone until Google shut down his account without warning while we were in Kazakhstan - no doubt for security reasons), According to the internet, it's a 3 hour bureaucratic form-filling procedure to reinstsate the Google account, and Reg can't be bothered.
The Chinese man shows us where the taxi rank is at the station and we say our goodbyes. There must be 200 people waiting for a taxi; it's one of those cordoned queues, like the ones in Post Offices and some shops - so at least it's fair. We've arrived at 8.45 am, peak time - but we only have to wait 45 minutes for a taxi. Reg reads the papers on his phone, and I read my kindle, as we gradually shuffle along in the queue.
We love our hostel; it has everything we need. We are on the ground floor ( a pleasant change from our 3rd storey room in the last hostel), we can get wifi in our room, there's a lovely hot power-shower, and they serve English breakfast -what more could we want?
After breakfast, a rest, and sorting ourselves out, it's about 3 pm and we decide to go to Tiananmen Square, It's vast: in fact it's actually 2 linked squares. You have to go under an underpass to get to the square, whichever way you approach it. There is x-ray security for your bags, and police using a scanning device for your person, in the underpass. However, they are only checking Chinese people; if you are European, you are waved through.
As Reg is taking a photo of me a Chinese man, probably in his 40's, approaches Reg and asks him where he's from, and starts chatting to both of us in a friendly way. A young woman in her 20's comes forward, and the man says he's a teacher, and introduces her as his student. We don't really twig that it might be a bit odd, a teacher and just one student together seeing the sights of Beijing, when, apparently, they both live 10 hours away by train, in Xi'an, where we'd just come from.
We are used to Chinese people being friendly to us, and having a chat; it happens all the time. After a while the man asks us if we've eaten yet; we say no, we're looking for somewhere nice to eat. He says he can take us to a good place, "to eat, and perhaps share a couple of beers, if we'd like to?" We say sure, that would be good, as we've only just arrived in Beijing and don't know our way around.
Reg walks on ahead with the man, I walk behind with the girl, who says she has a bad foot. A couple of times I call out to Reg and ask them to wait for us. The girl is friendly and chatty and there's nothing suspicious about her at all.
Eventually after a long walk we are taken to a restaurant, and shown into a private room; I guess the alarm bells should have started ringing at this point but they didn't.
We spend about 45 minutes with a waitress demonstrating a tea-tasting ceremony to us; we're told it's traditional in Beijing. No costs are mentioned and we naively don't ask; generally tea is extremely cheap in China. We go through a ritual of drinking lots of different types of tea from tiny cups, and the health-givng properties of all these teas are explained to us.
After this ceremony, the Chinese man suggests we have Peking duck, as it's a speciality in Beijing; we say that would be great. Again we are gullible and naive; we don't ask to see the menu prices. At some point during the meal, which is actually very nice indeed, the man asks us if we have a car at home - is it a BMW? No, we say, it's a 10-year-old Toyota. He asks us if we have a credit card, still we don't smell a rat; we say no, we only carry a debit card with us, and some cash. But, I say, we have enough cash on us for a Chinese meal.
Finally at the end of the meal, the bill arrives - it;s 4900 yuan, about £490 pounds! Our half will be £245. We stare at the bill in shock - we only have 600 yuan on us. And our debit card. I glance at Reg, who is looking extremely uncomfortable; I say,
"Do you mean the bill is 490 yuan, not 4900?"
No, he says, 4900 yuan, Apparently, each tea-tasting ceremony for each different tea cost 45 yuan, or £4.50.
"My half of the bill is the same," says the Chinese man. "Teachers earn a good salary in China".
You would have thought that at this point we would have realised the whole thing was a scam, and have refused to pay; we can't explain why we reluctantly got out our debit card and signed to pay 2450 yuan, or £245. We are flustered, we haven't been able to discuss the bill properly in front of these people, and we aren't thinking straight.
"I want to go home now", I say to Reg.
We part from the Chinese man and girl outside the restaurant. It's still early, about 7 pm. The Chinese pair, of course, don't press us to share the rest of our evening with them. They've got what they want, and can't get away fast enough.
As we walk away, after a couple of minutes, I say to Reg,
"That whole thing was a scam - we've been set up." Reg agrees; we are both really angry. I look for my debit card receipt; they didn't give it to me, and in my flustered state and shock, I didn't notice.
"Let's go back," I say. "I want my receipt. We can go to the police".
The Chinese man and girl are nowhere to be seen; the staff are surprised to see us back. I tell them I didn't have my debit card receipt, and would like it please. They try to show us back into the private room where we had our dinner, but I say, "No, we're staying here." (In the entrance of the restaurant), The staff can sense trouble, and turn up the music, while trying to placate me, and say they'll get me my receipt. All this confirms the scam even more - no doubt there are Europeans in another room in the restaurant being similarly scammed as I speak. I don't know where I get the courage, but I say, in a loud voice,
"I want my money back. I'm willing to pay 500 yuan; but I want 2000 yuan back."
The staff are shocked. They know they've been rumbled,
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," a young man says, getting on his mobile. "Here, here, you can speak.to the boss,"
I'm speaking to a Chinese man who speaks English - I think its the "English teacher" who scammed us but I can't be sure. All this time, Reg is standing in the doorway, making sure they don't lock us inside the restaurant.
"I want 2000 yuan. And I want it now. Otherwise, I'll go to the Police."
The man asks me to hand the phone back to the young man standing near me. After a couple of minutes, the young man says I can have my money. A woman is angry; she says, "1500!" and I say no, 2000 yuan.
The young man gives me my 2000 yuan - I count it, and sign for it, and we leave the restaurant, I am shaking, We know we have been incredibly stupid and trusting and gullible, but we've learned from our mistake; DON'T EVER GO FOR A MEAL WITH PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW; DON'T GO IN A PRIVATE ROOM; MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE PRICE OF WHATEVER YOU HAVE BEFORE YOU ORDER.
Apparently, according to the couple we meet the next day, this scam happens regularly to Europeans, who are approached by practiced rogues in Tianenmen Square.
We didn't get all our money back - we paid over-the-odds for our meal, and tea-tasting (which we hadn;t asked for) at 500 yuans, or £50; but at least we minimised our losses.
The majority of Chinese people, we've found, are lovely, kind, friendly, helpful people. But this incident has affected us badly and we'll be a lot more careful in future,
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