Tea Scammers Try to Cheat Tourist, Get Arrested

Tea Scammers Try to Cheat Tourist, Get Arrested
Apr 02, 2014 By eChinacities.com

Tea Scammers around Beijing’s most popular tourist destinations are an all too familiar horror story; seemingly innocuous and friendly ‘voluntary guides’ with excellent English will strike up a conversation, invite you for a cup of tea and land you with an insane bill that can run into the thousands for a pot of tea and a bowl of nuts.

“Rice” had come to visit the Forbidden City when a friendly voice called out and started chatting to her. It was a 20 year old Chinese girl named Wu Mou. Wu Mou told Rice that she was also travelling alone and wanted to hang out. Not being familiar with Beijing, and impressed by Wu Mou’s fluent English, Rice decided to go for a walk nearby the Forbidden City with her.

As they walked along, Wu Mou explained a little about Chinese tea culture and suggested they go get tea. The two girls headed to a tea house on Nanchizi Road and ordered two pots of tea, a bottle of wine and a bottle of beer. When it came to paying the bill, Rice handed over her credit card without checking, and only on returning to her hotel did she discover that she’d just footed the bill for a whopping 4800 RMB.

She realized that she’d been scammed and contacted the police, who quickly headed to the tea house and arrested the owner Li Mou. Tea scammers are the main source of revenue for the tea houses around the Forbidden City, and they often hang around the area on the lookout for solo travellers to take to the tea houses in exchange for a hefty commission.

Li Mou and his staff are currently being held on suspicion of fraud.

Source: qianlong.com  

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Keywords: Tea Scammers Try to Cheat Tourist Tea Scammers around Beijing

5 Comments

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keiranjones

haha I enjoyed the previous post. There have been many occasions where I have approached a police officer and told them about a bus jumping a red and almost hitting me or someone else. I give them the time, the bus number etc. the police officer is usually at the crossing anyway. They look at me, laugh and say "I know" or "mei ban fa". That awful phrase. I would say it's gonna take a bus to kill someone to do something about it but we all know it won't.

Apr 05, 2014 14:34 Report Abuse

DunceCap

This article makes it sound like the authorities are actually trying to do something about tea scammers--but that isn't the case. The police only arrested few because a foreign tourist actually managed to press charges, and (I am assuming) the idiot scammers obviously gave her a receipt that had the actual address of their little operation (I do not know if that says more about how brazen tea scammers are allowed to be, or about common sense in China). The tourist practically handed the case to the police on a silver platter...if she hadn't made it so easy, they would never have even bothered. It's actually a miracle they could rouse themselves to enough action to even make this arrest. Unless called upon to beat up elderly street vendors or harass artists who point out that corrupt officials kill schoolchildren, Chinese authorities are freakin' useless. If they actually wanted to put effort into busting tea scammers, hiring a couple laowai and doing stings really would be straightforward. It should actually be quite embarrassing for China that all of its major tourist sites are crawling with these types (you can't go to one without being approached by a tea or art scammer...or two). But, solving the problem would require some policemen to actually do something other than stand around...and that generally does not happen here. With that having been said---seriously, who goes with tea scammers? Every guidebook,hostel, and tour guide worth anything talks about them before they tell you anything else about this country. It amazes me, how much people do not put any research into traveling to a completely foreign country.

Apr 05, 2014 14:05 Report Abuse

bill8899

I am surprised.

Apr 03, 2014 17:25 Report Abuse

Guest1014418

Us a Chinese a people are so crever, make foreigner money soo easy. I love being told how nice and warm hearted Chinese people are and how great beijingers are in particular. Of course, those 'real' and 'civilised' people from Beijing wouldn't do such a thing, instead it's just those bloody countryside immigrants coming into the city making everyone look bad. I would go as far as saying Beijing is the least enjoyable city I've been to in china, the people even more rude and self entitled than anywhere else I've been. I was told they're really polite but all I experienced was rude and arrogant behaviour and someone trying to scam me every corner I turned. Two people in one trip to the city even told me to 'get the f*ck out of china' because I was aware of what they were up to and firmly refused. Great place.

Apr 03, 2014 10:53 Report Abuse

xinyuren

Not just Beijing. what you just described is China.

Apr 03, 2014 20:16 Report Abuse