Hi, today I would like to tell you a funny story. I hope it will entertain you, but also be a warning for future travelers.
It happened in the old town in Shanghai. I was taking a look around when a young Chinese couple approached me and asked me to take a picture of them. I did so, and afterwards we started talking. They were very nice and friendly, and explained how they were tourists from Beijing. It was very nice to find Chinese people who were good at English, as most of them, including taxi drivers, barely speak any.
After chatting for a while, they informed me that they were actually on their way to a traditional Chinese tea ceremony, and invited me to go with them. As I didn't have anything important to do and thought it might be a nice cultural experience, I went with them.
They took me to a small room in a building with a woman and a lot of different objects for the ceremony. I was given a menu with the tea prices, and remarked that most of the teas were a bit expensive, and a couple of the were really expensive. So I decided that I would only choose 2-3 of the less expensive ones, and that the experience would be worth the price.
But it wasn't that simple. The woman started doing rituals and serving tea, while explaining in Chinese (which was then translated to English by my companions) how to properly consume the tea, the history of tea and of the ceremony, how the rituals work, and so on. The tea was served in very small cups, and the woman was just pouring different teas in there as the ceremony went along. I realized that by getting caught up in the ceremony I might end up paying a lot of money, so after some time I asked them to stop and explained that I didn't have money to pay for too much tea. Luckily, I managed to convince them to tell the woman to stop the ceremony. I ended up having to pay around 30 USD for a bit of tea, and when I left the couple I was angry at myself for allowing things to get out of control.
Later on, when I was in Beijing, I was approached again by an English-speaking chinese person, who invited me to go have a drink at a bar, and his lines of dialogue were quite similar to the one used by the couple. I politely refused to go, but then I started wondering if it might be a common thing to invite tourists in China to places where they might get ripped off. So I decided to search for more stories on the Internet, and found that it was quite common for travelers to get tricked by this tea ceremony scam or something similar. After that, I was again asked around TEN times by different people in Beijing if I wanted to go have some coffee or tea, and the lines of dialogue were extremely similar, it was ridiculous.
So I would just like to remind everyone that in all countries there are dishonest people, and one should always be careful. But this of course doesn't mean that one should avoid contact with strangers, I don't want to encourage that, but there are always ways to both be cautious and friendly. In this case, for example, a good idea might be suggesting a different place to have tea or coffee.
It happened in the old town in Shanghai. I was taking a look around when a young Chinese couple approached me and asked me to take a picture of them. I did so, and afterwards we started talking. They were very nice and friendly, and explained how they were tourists from Beijing. It was very nice to find Chinese people who were good at English, as most of them, including taxi drivers, barely speak any.
After chatting for a while, they informed me that they were actually on their way to a traditional Chinese tea ceremony, and invited me to go with them. As I didn't have anything important to do and thought it might be a nice cultural experience, I went with them.
They took me to a small room in a building with a woman and a lot of different objects for the ceremony. I was given a menu with the tea prices, and remarked that most of the teas were a bit expensive, and a couple of the were really expensive. So I decided that I would only choose 2-3 of the less expensive ones, and that the experience would be worth the price.
But it wasn't that simple. The woman started doing rituals and serving tea, while explaining in Chinese (which was then translated to English by my companions) how to properly consume the tea, the history of tea and of the ceremony, how the rituals work, and so on. The tea was served in very small cups, and the woman was just pouring different teas in there as the ceremony went along. I realized that by getting caught up in the ceremony I might end up paying a lot of money, so after some time I asked them to stop and explained that I didn't have money to pay for too much tea. Luckily, I managed to convince them to tell the woman to stop the ceremony. I ended up having to pay around 30 USD for a bit of tea, and when I left the couple I was angry at myself for allowing things to get out of control.
Later on, when I was in Beijing, I was approached again by an English-speaking chinese person, who invited me to go have a drink at a bar, and his lines of dialogue were quite similar to the one used by the couple. I politely refused to go, but then I started wondering if it might be a common thing to invite tourists in China to places where they might get ripped off. So I decided to search for more stories on the Internet, and found that it was quite common for travelers to get tricked by this tea ceremony scam or something similar. After that, I was again asked around TEN times by different people in Beijing if I wanted to go have some coffee or tea, and the lines of dialogue were extremely similar, it was ridiculous.
So I would just like to remind everyone that in all countries there are dishonest people, and one should always be careful. But this of course doesn't mean that one should avoid contact with strangers, I don't want to encourage that, but there are always ways to both be cautious and friendly. In this case, for example, a good idea might be suggesting a different place to have tea or coffee.
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