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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael M who wrote (71725)	1/9/2000 10:53:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

No- it was more complicated than that. We had wanted to take out a very nice guide we had in one of the first cities we went to. He was very nice, very sweet, very earnest- he obviously liked the West a lot. He was one of the few people we felt weren't trying to rip us off in some way. But we were shy about asking and things moved pretty quickly on our tour since we were seeing a lot. So when we got to Beijing we had this very aggressive tour guide. She SEEEMED nice, but it turned out she wasn't. We asked her if she'd like to go to dinner with us- somewhere she ate, because we wanted to see a local place. So we go out- and she stops by her house to pick up husband and kid (who thew up in the cab- I was ready to go home at that point, but we were trapped) We had asked for a LOCAL place, but we get taken to some fancy restaurant with a private dining room- just US in it. We have no idea how much it's going to cost (we had very little money- my mother was going to go on the trip but got sick so sent me and my husband so she wouldn't lose the money- but I was just out of college, didn't have a job yet- so we didn't bring a lot of spending money). People pass by the door to stare at us. Not good. The tour guide orders. What? We have no idea. A duck is brought in- it leaves, and comes back in pieces- looks like less duck than showed up originally. Mr. X now calls this the "peeking duck" incident- he decided they use the same duck for everyone, bring it to your table and then take it to the kitchen and bring you leftovers. It was as good a theory as anything. Tour guide insists on touching everything. They are very fast with the spinning central server. My husband and I can get to only a few dishes before they've touched stuff. Tour guide wants to know why we're not eating. ugh The bill was 100 dollars- and we had the tourist money NOT peoples money- which was worth a lot more. My guess is the tour guide had cut some deal where she was getting a hefty chunk of the money back. I was pissed. But as I decided later- that's the real China. Interesting things came out in the conversation. They thought ALL Americans were rich- they couldn't believe we didn't own property. They were as pissed off about the elderly as Lizzie is. Our tour guide seemed to think the old people had all the property and you couldn't get any if you were young. Her burning desire was to get a piano. She was very aggressive- I bet she's got one by now. Her husband was very quiet. A civil engineer (in every sense of the word). He was clearly embarrassed to be there. I think he liked my husband, who is also an engineer. I wish we could have gone out just with him. Now that I think about it we met at least 3 very nice Chinese men and NO nice Chinese women. Anyway I got horribly ill on the way home from China (about 24hrs or so after the horrible dinner). So I will always blame our awful tour guide for it.