::A Geek in Korea::

Whenever you have a subsidized tour, part of the money the tour company loses to the cheap airfare is made up by forcing you to go to tourist traps. You are on a bus in a foriegn country, don’t know where you are, and they drop you off saying,
“This is a real nice place. Let’s go inside!” You can’t help feel a little annoyed, but at the same time, what else are you going to do?

We had already done the subsidized tour in Thailand, so after our first day full of actual sights and sounds of China, my wife and I expected the hard sell to come. We went to a great park early in the morning. Elderly people were exercising, doing ballroom dancing outside, playing “hacky sack” with a bean bag with a trailing feather tail, and other activities. After we left there, we got herded back on the bus and taken to a tea store.

We were told on good authority by a Chinese teacher in Korea that this is not where you want to go to get tea in China. The overpriced stuff they sell to tourist isn’t what Chinese people drink, so why pay a premium price for it? My wife and I decided to walk out of the tea shop and head out for a nearby park that had huge totem poles you could see from the street. We didn’t know how long to stay out of the tea shop, since they never give you a time to meet back on the bus. Since we didn’t want to be left behind, we came back a little early.

Our guide, who surely got paid based on the number of tourists he delivered at the places, urged us to go in before they were finished to be included in the “count”. We sat in a small room, got told about the health properties of different teas, then had a few sips of the different items they offered. They wanted ~$150 USD for a few bags of tea. Yeah, sure. That’s a fair price for tea.

We were then taken to a silk blanket factory. Here we did want to purchase something for our relatives back in Korea. We got to see them roll the silk, touched the nearly made blankets as they were streched, and saw the result. We paid around ~$100 USD total for two 100% pure silk comforters. We later saw the same items, duty free, for ~$220 USD each. We were happy with this particular distraction to our tour.

From there we went to a North Korean restaurant in Beijing. I’ve seen this restaurant on television before, but it was strange to be there in person. The waitresses are all young, polite women from North Korea. You are warned not to talk about politics or anything other than restaurant small talk. The women can’t answer anything about their lives back home, and if they violate any of their rules of employment, not only do they get punished, their families at home are punished too. This was enough to keep everyone on their best behavior.The food was delicious, the service was outstanding, and everyone was happy when they waitresses started to sing and play music for us.

From there we went to an ice park. Well, it was more like a giant freezer with some ice statues. They had an ice slide you rode down with a piece of fabric under your coat. It was too dark to take nice pictures, and more of a thing for very small children. I went down the slide several times.

From there, we went to a pearl factory. This was the most annoying tourist trap, as it was before our dinner, out of our way, and really over priced. The pearls were artificial, as they took oysters, inserted sand, then harvested the pearls. They opened an oyster for us to see how they dig them out. Someone asked if they could eat the shellfish after they were done. I actually guessed someone would say it before I entered the building.The jewerly was absolute overpriced junk. No one bought anything.

As we were waiting to go, some people that had seen us walk out of the tea shop started talking about what we did. They wondered if we could get out of going to some of these tourist traps by complaining. They wanted to know why we were interested in going to other places off the tour. We told them that our Chinese friend had recommended going to a Chinese supermarket and simply buying good tea there. It would be cheaper, better quality, and also authentic. Everyone loved this idea, and it spread to the rest of the group slowly. No one was willing to bring up a deviation to the tour to the guide however. This would be a serious breach of the nun-chi group dynamics. They actually wanted to elect me as the person to bring it up, but I had to point out I was the person least likely to accurately articulate their concerns.

Eventually, smelling the revolt in progress, our tour guide did come over and the idea was brought up. He, of course, tried to give lots of different reasons why letting a group of people that couldn’t speak a word of Chinese into a supermarket a bad idea. It was too late, and we had already been to three tourist shops today. We got him to conceed a twenty minute shopping spree at a local store.

We set off from the bus once dumped in the parking lot. We headed to the first level of the store and approached the store map. We knew they had food, but we didn’t know how to get the the basement where the food was. The escalator only went up from the first floor, not down to the basement. We grabbed a person and started doing wild pantomimes involving stairs and flailing arms. She held up a shirt and thought we wanted to buy it. Progress was not being made.

We ditched the woman, and the sign, and ran around looking for the stairs. Eventually we found our way down, and got shopping. We purchased several kinds of tea, some snacks, and some fruit. They had TANG at the Chinese supermarket. Why can’t I get no TANG ’round here?

We ran back to the bus, and most of us made it in the time alotted. Some of the people in our revolution dawdled a little too long, but only the people that doggedly refused to get off the bus would have complained anyway. Everyone had a good time shopping. We picked up tea at price so mind bogglingly cheap I can’t imagine how bad the people that had fallen for the tea shop scam had felt.