There’s a list of scams a mile long to beware of.  A big one is counterfeit money.  The 50 and 100 note yuan are often passed along to unsuspecting people by the street vendors and taxi cab drivers.  We need to keep an eye out for the color, the watermark, the paper, and the braille dots in the lower left corner of the front side.  The color, apparently, is hard to imitate, and the watermark on fake ones is not clear.  If we could  carry around a black light,  we could see if the paper was too bright.

Then there’s the tea house scam.  Tea houses are everywhere — pleasant respites to sip tea and relax in beautiful surroundings.  But beware! Students “practicing their English” invite you to a tea tasting: trying different teas, learning about what ailments or parts of the body the teas were good for, what water temperature was appropriate for that tea, how to properly hold the cups, etc.  Then at the end you are not only overcharged for the tea, but also charged for the room, the tea pot, the lesson, among other things.  Duped tourists have been known to pay several hundred dollars!

Of course, like in other countries, there are the taxi drivers who take you out of your way and add many miles to the trip.  (Some rickshaw drivers do the same).  The taxi drivers must have government licenses but some do not, and you have to be knowledgeable about what their license plates must look like.  In China, well in Beijing and Shanghai anyway, all taxis charge you by the mile and sometimes by the minute (at red lights and in traffic jams — any time you’re traveling less than 12 km/hour).  The customer also pays for tolls.  Government taxis all have machine printed receipts that spell out all the details of the fare so that’s another word to learn — “fapiao” (receipt).  That way you have some recourse if you feel gypped.

And  there are the pickpockets!  Everywhere.   We must carry our passport, money, credit and debit cards, and all important papers with us at all times — in a “secret” security belt under our clothes.  My backpack has steel enforced straps and hidden zippers and a way to hook it to my chair in a restaurant so it can’t be snatched away.  Oh, the stories I’ve read from those who learned all these lessons the hard way.

Might it be less dangerous to go swimming with the crocodiles in the Nile?!