I imagine it might be worst in Beijing, since they have lots of foreigners to make fun of, and lots of those foreigners are tourists, and nobody likes tourists (at least I don’t. Whatever country they’re from, they all annoy me. Even when I am one, I’m always a little ashamed of myself).
Head out to the backwoods of China and you get LOTS of pointing, staring, jaws dropping, kids (and some grownups) following you down the street giggling, then hiding if you turn around, people coming over to talk to you in restaurants, etc. On one trip there were two of us, and without fail, the first thing that came out every person who saw us was “liang ge laowai!!!” nudge the friend, point at us. That got annoying. BUT, I never experienced the kind of hostility, pettiness, scamming crappiness that happens in Beijing (and Shanghai, I did get some crap there). Most people either ignored me, or were very nice, helpful, and friendly. They were often incredibly racist toward the Tibetans and other minorities though; maybe the white person racism is lying dormant in there, but it takes more contact to really bring it out 
Good points, zyzzx. What’s comical is that China is trying to pass itself as a welcome tourist destination. It isn’t. I’ve heard nothing but terrible things from foreigners who speak Mandarin; they can understand all the racist tripe the locals spew. That the cities in China are even worse than the countryside in terms of hostility, dishonesty, and scheming makes the country that much less appealing.
I’m not remotely surprised that the Chinese tourists were spitting racial pejoratives about tommy’s white friend, nor that they thuggishly threatened her when she called them on it.
You brought an interesting point; Chinese racism towards Tibetans and other minorities is even more fierce than towards foreigners. One wonders how the Chinese tourists will treat Taiwanese people outside of Taipei.
They also have two heads. I know, I’ve seen it.
HG
Sad to hear about the attitudes, still I am hoping to go to travel there sometime soon. I still believe there are many fascinating things to see there being interested in history etc., I am especially interested in seeing some of the Hakka communities there to compare to Taiwan.
We went to Alishan last year and I heard what sounded like a large youth camp in the middle of the forest, came around a corner and a bunch of Chinese tourists were having a conversation at each other by shouting at distances of 100ms or so all the way around, in the middle of these beautiful ancient trees, kind of took away from the experience. Part of it is from the insistence (and cultural preference) from travelling in large tour groups. What can you do. My wife was in Shanghai previously and overhead the way they referred to tourists in Chinese who were haggling with them in English…it was all ‘f%ck you, sh$t, in Chinese’…rough people.
They smashed down and rebuilt much of the historical stuff. Mind you there are those round house Hakka joints in Fujian that would certainly be worth a look.
I dunno, maybe I’m just used to it. China isn’t Taiwan, that’s for sure, but there’s no real racial motivation as there certainly is in Thailand, for example, to rip off foreigners. Anyone not from that block, suburb, town, province or whatever, is treated or fleeced in exactly the same way.
I’ve stated many times here that I think far too many Forumosans have an undeservedly grim view of mainlanders, and most often without ever having been there. They are actually people, so there are good and bad, and if you’ve spent time in Taiwan and speak Mandarin, you are yards ahead of anyone else in dealing with them. The difference is that Taiwan simply doesn’t have the level of poverty and desperation that China does, has had some of its rougher edges buffed off by Japanese colonization, and generally treat foreigners and each other fairly well. People are harder in China, especially in Beijing where they wear their gruffness with pride and even more so in the harsher areas of the countryside. See for example the very good movie Blind Shaft, for example. Personally, I like the gruffness of Beijing people, as it makes for a refreshingly nice change from the nancy boys you meet in Shanghai and the south.
Of course you have to haggle, that goes with the territory, but you can be as big an arsehole as you like. Your best bet is to affect a strong Beijing accent wherever you happen to be and bark at them with authority. It always works for me, even in HK. And obviously too, there is far greater risk of blundering into a scam, of which there oodles.
HG
All I have to say is that most of my suppliers treat me well… I never been in China for tourism, neither I want to - just going on tourism to Macau and Hong Kong is enough to know what expect us in China… although, i have to say that the girls in KTV surely treat foreigners well…
Certainly true for temples. The temples in Beijing were really shit and boring. They looked like they’d been restored by the same company, or something, so they were all painted with exactly the same paints and patterns. They charge a fee to get in, more for non-Chinese, naturally. No signs of life there, at all. Zzzz.
HGC, a balanced view. I met some interesting people, sure, but not many. I understand why, but I don’t think poverty is the whole reason.
I don’t regret going, I had an absolute blast and the annoyances were petty ones. So the wall is tacky and lame, but it’s also spectacular. China should just stop dicking about with everything and stop trying to tart itself up for tourists. It’s fine as it is. The wall doesn’t need a rollercoaster to get up it, it needs safe steps. Temples don’t need a lick of paint and an entrance booth, they are interesting without all that.
I spent less than half the cash I budgeted for my month-long China trip because I couldn’t be arsed going anywhere that sold stuff. It was interesting to hear the views of the tourists on the bus to the wall. Mostly middle aged, well-off people who were there on business, European, non Chinese speakers, second language English speakers. All said how hard it was to be there, how it was boring but at the same time what a spark the place had, what potential for tourism and what a shame it all was that it was wasted.
If China wants overseas tourists (does it? Do places like Beijing make more from domestic tourism?), it has more than enough to attract them, but everywhere is so lame, it isn’t going to become a world class destination.
Good question. The domestic tourism market is far less flakey and certainly abundant. Most of the foreign tourist joints in Shanghai and Beijing are crap, and full of the worst kind of Xinjiang scammer you can imagine. Come to think of it, that’s what it was like in 1992 when I first went. Then the Xinjiang dudes were fleecing the domestic tourists, and certainly the sudden influx of Taiwanese tour groups. But to their credit, they were generous with their illicit black smokable to foreigners.
What struck me back then and still strikes me now is how your serious mainland desperado is still at that late eighties style Taiwan hood stage of looking upon foreigners as too great an unknown, so they almost strictly ply their violent trade among their own. But of course, I wonder when that will snap, like it has in Thailand.
I work with oodles of mainland folks, both in my office in HK, and in our Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing offices. On any given day I’m on the phone nattering to people in those offices, and to a lesser degree, Taiwan, for around an hour to an hour and a half. Email traffic is constant and I vet their research. I guess it’s a case of averages, and China has the numbers, but I find the mainlanders to be on a far closer wavelength than certainly HK Cantos, for eg.
China has the numbers and thus the diversity. Mainland punks are way cool. That’s a ballsy move in a place like China. China is now where Taiwan was when the likes of el Chiefo, Sandman, Lord Lucan, et al, were cutting their teeth in Taibak. I think it’s no accident that the direction the economy was heading in both instances was up, excluding this current blip (on a long-term view).
Nonetheless, right now, what I’m way more interested in is Thailand. Missus Huang and the lil’ princess are chilling on the couch here watching La La & Lu Lu and the Molam band do their thing. Actually, it’s all one band, called Pong Lang Sa On.
[quote]Pong lang sa on
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pong Lang Sa On ( โปงลางสะออน ) is a band from Thailand, founded in 2005 . Their career was helped, by winning a talent contest on TV, in Thailand.
Their style of music can be referred to, as folk music from Thailand, with a strong influence of pop and rock.
On stage, the musicians perform together with no less than ten dancers. These dancers are also specialists, in folk dance from Thailand. The front man, goes by the name Eed . Next to him, when he performs on stage, are two humorous ladies, referred to as La-la and Lu-lu .
Last year, they toured in the U.S.A. A tour of Europe, will commence 27. August 2008.[/quote]
La-la, I think, well it’s one or the other, is an illegal immigrant from Laos. Her rival on stage is Lu-lu, with a huge red flowery thing on her head. She’s an uppity lass from Chiang Mai, who’s only interested in foreigners, and so pretends to only speak English, but constantly trying to show her superior Thai culture relative to her awkward bumpkin rival.
HG
I have to agree with Huang Guang Chen assestment. In general if you are not considered a local, someone is going to try to scam you. Granted in HK and Taiwan it is not as aggressive about it as in the mainland, but it happens in Taiwan as well.
Go to tourist areas in Taiwan and there will be some people at the bus stop scamming you for a ride/tour or scamming you into an illegally converted hotel. Overpriced trinkets, kickbacks from resturants and other stuff going on.
Of course to get scammed your Mandarin or Minnan has to be up to par to understand what’s going on. I would find that foreign tourist wouldn’t get fleeced as bad due to the lack of communication.
I sort of agree with you AC - good to see you back, by the way - but I think the more language you know as a European looking person, the more wary the response. This may differ given your ethnic appearance.
HG
I have no illusions about the big cities on the East Coast although would like to do a proper tour of Beijing, I’ll be heading for Yunnan, XinJiang …that sort of place.
Huang Guang Chen,
Good to see you too.
Well in Taiwan most of the vacation spots are outside of Taipei. So it was mostly local Taiwanese scamming tourist Taiwanese.
I have no idea how you would convince a foreigner who spoke no Mandarin or Taiwanese into a “special” tour or illegal hotel room as a spontaneous purchase. Those are the most profitable and expensive scams for those people. They will usually start badgering you as you’re waiting at the bus stops headed to the final destination, once you leave the train stations.
[quote=“ac_dropout”]
I have no idea how you would convince a foreigner who spoke no Mandarin or Taiwanese into a “special” tour or illegal hotel room as a spontaneous purchase. Those are the most profitable and expensive scams for those people. They will usually start badgering you as you’re waiting at the bus stops headed to the final destination, once you leave the train stations.[/quote]
English speakers?
[quote=“Buttercup”][quote=“ac_dropout”]
I have no idea how you would convince a foreigner who spoke no Mandarin or Taiwanese into a “special” tour or illegal hotel room as a spontaneous purchase. Those are the most profitable and expensive scams for those people. They will usually start badgering you as you’re waiting at the bus stops headed to the final destination, once you leave the train stations.[/quote]
English speakers?[/quote]
Oh yes, I forgot, those average Taiwanese, like myself… 
Ugh…local tourism in China. Sure, it’s great to see all of those historic locations that you read about in school.
But it cost I think about 4,000 RMB in misc. fees, tickets, enforced transportation to see Xian and Huashan. No discrimination, everyone was charged. I just felt bad for those for whom it cost something a bit less than a months wages.
What’s this about all Mainlanders being bad? There is at least 200 million really nice people. However, there are also 1,100 million morlocks that do things like crap in the corner of the garage, break into people cars drunk to smoke, spit everywhere, push people out of queues.
None of my ML friends or colleagues do this, but they are a part of the 200 million.
Would you expect it to be otherwise? Nearly every time I’ve been ripped off or had to deal with deliberately hostile/racist comments in any country it’s been in the cities.
[quote=“ac_dropout”][quote=“Buttercup”][quote=“ac_dropout”]
I have no idea how you would convince a foreigner who spoke no Mandarin or Taiwanese into a “special” tour or illegal hotel room as a spontaneous purchase. Those are the most profitable and expensive scams for those people. They will usually start badgering you as you’re waiting at the bus stops headed to the final destination, once you leave the train stations.[/quote]
English speakers?[/quote]
Oh yes, I forgot, those average Taiwanese, like myself… [/quote]
No, the scammers in Beijing who target white people, speak reasonable English. Obviously not Taiwanese people! Sorry for the confusion.
There certainly are scammers targeting foreigners using English, The classic is some missy on the street saying she’s learning English, speaks passable to a certain script, suggests a nice tea house, orders some snacks, which the sucker thinks, it’s China, how expensive can they be? Missy makes some excuse to check out before the bill, which is usually around Rmb2,000. This seems to be the magic number in which most foreigners would rather pay and offset an underlying threat of violence. See this link for a list of them, including the “Beijing teahouse scam.”
Similarly, it can happen in a bar. It did to me in Shanghai down near the Bund (classic fleecing zone), but I got nasty. Amazingly, just after pushing a vast Chinese chappy’s head very forcibly into a wall, I was sort of expecting things to turn really nasty, but a bunch of cops walked in and so I skipped out. I figured the game was intimidation, and for the price, they wouldn’t really want to up the stakes to murder. I may have been right, but I also may have been completely wrong. Fortunately in that instance, I’ll never know.
When mainalnd folks started coming to HK as tourists en-masse, many were fleeced blind. There was a great story of the South China Morning Post hearing of a family charged a ridiculous sum for a camera, or something, which was crap. The SCMP paid to bring the family back, made sure they got their money back . . . and . . . the poor bastards got fleeced again!!! I have no doubt the huxters of Taiwan are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of all this new commie money heading their way.
Likewise, mainland tourists to places like Rome and Spain are the preferred targets of the marauding pickpockets and thieves. Apparently the first few batches lowered their guard thinking Europeans are rich, so they probably aren’t as savage as our scammers. Here, catch my baby! Ouch! 
HG
Hey, to get fleeced by Chinese you can just stay in Europe, and go to a Chinese Restaurant or Chinese Shop… you are fleeced the moment you get inside the store… (in only one weekend, the Portuguese Police closed more than 300 chinese restaurants around Portugal because none of them complied minimally with the hygiene standards, most reused not eaten food from other customers and didn’t use the ingredients listed in the dish (they would just put fancy ingredient names and then use cheap ones)).
As for my trips to China, luckily I always go with local suppliers who invite me (and pay the bills). A friend of mine got fleeced by the KTV girl he took to the room, who asked him money to buy a cellphone, so she could call him the next day to meet… 2K RMB… she never called back, and guess she went laughing to the bank…
Wow you are telling me you cant trust a whore?