Anyone For A Cuppa?

The day started well – the stream of water falling off the sun terrace roof (our indicator of the strength of the rain) had stopped, meaning that there was no more wet stuff falling from the skies above Shanghai. That meant that we could go exploring properly, rather than dashing around with our raincoats on whilst stopping off in alcoves waiting for a break in the weather. According to the chap on reception we would be able to get a map of the area from the post office two minutes down the road.

Two minutes down we couldn’t find it, so we got the metro down to People’s Square to see if there was anything touristy where we could pick up a map. There didn’t seem to be a huge amount to see there, so we took a little wander round the corner to where we thought we could get a bit more touristy, and that’s when it all started…

Shanghai looking good, near People's Park

“Hello, would you mind taking our picture, please?” came the request from a young Chinese girl standing with her two friends. “No problem” I replied, as we had been getting used to taking peoples photos, or indeed being IN the photos with the requestor! I took two pictures of the three of them and then as I handed the camera back the girl whose English was best struck up a proper conversation with me, as did the guy with James. We chatted for a few minutes (the other girl didn’t speak very much English as she was studying traditional Chinese medicine, not English) and they said that they were visiting Shanghai for a few days and would we like to join them in going to a traditional tea ceremony. Now I had read on Wikitravel that these are supposed to be pretty good so after a quick discussion with James we decided that we would indeed join them – “when in Rome” as they say!

We walked through the park bit and saw an area that had hundreds of paper signs hung up from wires along the path. Maiqi (May-shay) told me that it was for match-making for older people who hadn’t got married yet. Essentially you write down who you are, how much you earn, whether you have a car or not, and maybe put a picture on there. I asked if that was the reason why the three of them were here but she just laughed it off.

After a short walk we arrived at a place called the Champs Elyssees, which was basically just an indoor shopping plaza, but not a very big one. We took the lift to the second floor and our new-found friends took us inside a small room where the tea ceremony was to be performed. It was very small and cosy, but we managed to all fit inside, and then the tea mistress entered and began setting up her gear. We were briefly shown a price-list, one that seemed pretty expensive as tea goes, but it seemed that we would just be tasting some and could buy some if we wanted later. IF we wanted. All through the show our new companions were chatting away to us about anything and everything, including talking quite loudly even when the tea mistress was telling us about what she was doing – in Chinese of course, but they would translate it for us so that we could understand.

A selection of Chinese teas...

After the show had finished we were shown the price list again and I chose to buy a small tub of the fruit tea that we had sampled. It came to 198 RMB. It was only when James pointed out that that was about £19.80 that I realised I had got my maths hopelessly wrong. All you have to do is divide it by 10 to get it into GBP sterling, and I certainly didn’t want to shell out nearly £20 on some tea! But Maiqi was buying some so that would pay for the tea mistresses time. Or so we thought.

Tea leaves under the eyes (?) a couple of new friends?

The next thing we know a bill has been produced and it comes to quite a few RMB, hitting both me and James for over £30……EACH! OK, it seemed pretty expensive, but we had drunk a lot of tea and enjoyed a genuine traditional Chinese experience. So we handed over the money and justified it by remembering that we had saved some money on the hard sleeper train coming to Shanghai so it kind of evened out.

After we left our new companions asked us if we wanted to hang out round Nanjing Road and do some shopping and maybe meet up later for a drink or something. We declined as the shops weren’t exactly what we were after and we wanted to see a few more things around town. But we exchanged email addresses and we all said that we would keep in touch. Aaaaaaaah.

James and I made our way down to the river, an area called The Bund for some reason. The famous Shanghai skyline is from The Bund side of the river with all the skyscrapers being on the other side, so it makes for a fantastic vista when you get to the waters edge. We took some pics and generally drank up the scene.

The Bund, Shanghai. Not a bad view!

As we were about to turn and leave for pastures new a woman prodded me on the shoulder and said words to the effect of “can I have a picture of you” to which I, naturally, replied “no problem”. She was holding her baby at the time and had to shuffle him round to hand him off to her friend before joining me for the photo. It was only then that I realised that what she actually wanted was a photo of me holding her baby! Well, I was shocked to say the least, and couldn’t help but see (and hear) James crying with laughter just off to my left. I don’t hold many babies, but thankfully I managed to work out what to do with him and duly posed for a couple of photos, even with the woman positioning me in a different spot as the light was supposedly better. Once she was happy with her photos I handed back the chubby kid and we got back to looking at the skyline across the shore.

I think you dropped this...?

In actuality we waited for about 30 seconds for them to leave the area and then laughed ourselves silly over the event. What a morning it had been. And we hadn’t even had lunch yet!

After lunch we thought we would have a little wander down the market street nearby the hotel, the one that we had explored slightly on our first day in Shanghai, in the rain. We were on the lookout for a couple of warm, light and cheap coats as the weather was only going to get colder the nearer we got to Nepal. We didn’t find anything really suitable, but there was certainly a lot of tat doing the rounds, but nothing that we really fancied. On the way back we stopped into the large Laoximen Tea Plaza building near the hotel to see if I could buy some cheaper tea than from the tea ceremony place.

The Laoximen Tea Plaza. Nice.

There was plenty to choose from, and each tea shop seemed to have the same kind of setup, whereby you would sit at the table and they would make some up and you could sample it first. Realising that we didn’t want to get stung for another £30 I just asked about prices to get a ball-park figure. I got a good price. It was certainly a lot less than £30, but only after we had navigated through a rather cumbersome language barrier. In the end I had to use Google Translate that was already loaded on their computer screen to get my message across to them. When they understood me they were both all smiles and enthusiasm as they got my order ready. It was a great little place and not a single tourist in sight – these are the places that we need to be hitting for that authentic experience.

Dinner that night was at a place called Grape, and one that I had found on Tripadvisor, because it was supposedly great food and at fantastic prices. Well, they were half right! The prices were indeed fantastic but the food was probably more mediocre than great. And we hadn’t heard from our new friends about going for a drink later that night, but by that time it had got quite late so we didn’t worry too much about it. Unfortunately, James had a repeat performance of what I had at the restaurant the night before – they brought his main course but then had to wait about 10 minutes just to get his rice! Crazy. But for cheap big bottles of Tsingtao and decent grub we were happy.

In Grape. Big beer.

When we got back to the hotel we discussed further our little jaunt to the tea ceremony, and it seemed like we both had a little nagging doubt about it all. Something wasn’t sitting right with us. I had looked up “China Tea Shanghai” but had not seen anything that would lead me to believe it was anything other than a pricey authentic experience. A little later James turned round on his chair and said “I think we’ve been scammed” and I just knew that he was right. I hadn’t searched further on the internet to find the scam as I half wanted to believe it was all above board, but it looked like he had done some research, and the news was not good.

There were countless blogs and forums detailing the China Tea Scam that outlined everything that we had just been through that morning. One saving grace was that it seemed like they had taken pity on us and charged us a “reasonable” amount, whereas other, more unlucky, victims had seen a bill with hundreds of dollars on it. We cursed the little b@stards for ripping us off, but we were also mad at ourselves for getting sucked in by it. One thing for sure they were very good at it and must have down it hundreds of times to lure the Gray boys in. It also seemed that some people had managed to get their money back from the scammers, so we searched the forums for any possible tips that we could use for when we confronted the kids who had conned us out of £65.

Oh we would confront them alright. They just didn’t know who they were messing with…