The Tea Scam in China

FYI - 1 USD = 6.3 RMB (Chinese Yuan) at the time of this writing.

One night, while out in Beijing with a few guys from my hostel, we met these 2 Chinese girls who, at the end of the night, invited us out for karaoke. My friends didn't want to go, so they ended up going back and it was just me and the 2 Chinese girls. Now the fun starts.

One of the Chinese girls has an electric motorbike, which just runs off a battery. This means it's nice and quiet, but also slow. I think I had slightly forgotten that this girl was downing glasses of wine earlier in the evening, so I had no problem jumping on the back of her electric motorbike with her AND her friend. After we take off I realize this is quite scary, since the motobike goes so slow that we don't have as much momentum keeping the bike from falling over. It probably doesn't matter too much with 1 or 2 people, but you really feel it with 3. Sometimes we were driving through posts supposed to keep cars off the street, and I was worried we would swerve into them!

Anyway, I'm sandwiched between these Chinese girls looking for karaoke and I see nothing of note. The bar we were at was not on a strip or anything, and I don't see anything else around. They start telling me that they want to have tea before we go to karaoke, and I didn't really try to object, they weren't the greatest english speakers. While telling me this we actually circled a block once and then went around to circle it again…which started to make me a little suspicious. We end up stopping in front of this place, I'm not even sure what it was, but we started walking away from it down the street around the corner anyway, the girls knew where they were going. As we were walking away this guy starts yelling at me from the place that it's a scam and that he bought a 200 RMB bottle of wine that actually charged his card 5000 USD. I thanked him for the advice since I didn't really know what he was talking about, but it did get me even more suspicious.

When we round the corner and finally enter the tea place, this is when I immediately know that it's the tea scam. We sat down in the front and on a board was a bunch of chinese characters with a few numbers I assumed were prices. One said 20, reasonable, the other 30, ok…and then one said 6660 and the other 8000. I didn't know what they was but it couldn't be good. I had heard of the tea scam vaguely before, but I knew was that they take you to tea and order a bunch of things and then make you pay for it at the end, so I was ready. I told them that I'm not buying them anything and the only thing I'm buying is my own tea. They kind of acknowledged this…but not really.

They give me a menu and the thing is ridiculous. The cheapest price is 20 RMB for a glass and 50 RMB for a pot of tea. After turning a few pages I easily see prices of 500 RMB, 1100 RMB and the like. I pretty much ignore them as they try to recommend me to some of the more expensive teas, but I didn't want to leave right away, I wanted to see what else they had in store for me. I decided to get a pot of the cheapest tea.

Them: Ohhh why don't we get this one! (points to one twice as expensive)

Me: No.

Them: Well we should get two of this one. (points to the cheap one that I want)

Me: No, we'll get one.

We sit down and start chatting as the waitress brings us our tea. As soon as I get it, I give her 100 RMB and tell her I want to pay for it. Everyone goes up in arms haha.

Them: Don't pay yet!

Me: I think I'll pay now.

Them: But we want to get snacks, don't you want any snacks?

Me: No we're not getting any snacks, this is all I'm getting.

Maybe we said a few more things, but the waitress took my money and gave my change, so I was squared away and ready to bolt if things got ugly. Before she left one of the girls said something to her in Chinese…hmmm, I figured she ordered something else without asking me. I drank my tea only after they did, not knowing what else they had in store. Conversation started to get boring since I no longer cared about these scammers and took everything they said with a grain of salt.

Soon the waitress came back with a small plate of peanuts.

Me: I don't want that, take it back.

Them: But it's only 20 RMB!

Me: I don't care, I'm not buying it.

Them: Do you want any other snacks?

Me: Nope the only way those are getting on this table is if you agree to pay for it.

Them: *Whine, bitch, moan* Ok we'll pay for it.

It wasn't long after that I decided it was time to go, so I quickly said it was getting late (which really it was almost 3:30am) and bolted out of there. They didn't chase me.

Still, if I hadn't known about this scam it would've been easy for them to start ordering things and I wouldn't have thought that everything would've been all put on my bill. Beware the tea scam.