oriental-list (link)

Re: looking for reliable local tour guides

From: oriental-list
Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 04:59:37 +0800
To: micah@earthling.net
Subject: [oriental-list] Re: looking for reliable local tour guides

Mike Maas asked:

>  we will also want to take some day trips in the Nanjing, Shanghai,
> Suzhou, Danyang and Guilin areas and are looking for references for
> reliable local guides.  We both speak Chinese, me enough putonghua to 
> get
> things done, and she is a native speaker of both putonghua and 
> cantonese
> and speaks enough guangxihua to get around as well.

...so it's a bit of a puzzle as to why a guide would be wanted since 
both parties seem quite able to look after themselves.

> Her greatest fear is that we spend a lot of time and money and not get 
> to
> see what we want to see.

Oddly enough, hiring a guide is likely to increase rather than decrease 
this possibility and many on this list, which has a history of being 
staunchly in favour of independent travel, will be puzzled at the 
recent postings asking about guides. China is somewhere it's not hard 
to get around by yourself, and where guides are generally best avoided, 
or used with great caution, and here's why:

In a country notorious for its corruption the travel industry is one of 
the most venal areas of business, typically taking every opportunity to 
exploit the ignorance and relative wealth of inbound travellers, who 
often go home equally ignorant of the degree to which they have been 
fleeced, and eager to recommend their guides to others.

In addition to charging what might be a week's income or more for a 
single day's work, guides normally collude with restaurants and 
souvenir sellers to cheat their customers. Guides choose restaurants 
for you according to how big a kick-back they will pay, and not 
according to how good the food is. Of course, the kick-back ends up in 
your bill. They choose souvenir shops on the same basis, and exploit 
your trust by telling you the 'fair' price is many multiples of what's 
realistic, getting handsome rake-off for themselves. I've seen someone 
pay *15 times* what they might have paid for a purchase simply because 
they trusted the guide's advice. There are further kick-backs from 
sights visited where there are entrance fees to be paid.

"Oh no!" you cry. "Xiao Meimei wasn't like that. She was a real 
sweetie." But it's the real sweeties who are the best bilkers, and it 
was a real sweetie who performed the con mentioned above. The income 
from swindling customers is now so great that some tour companies no 
longer pay their guides, but instead charge them for the privilege of 
taking out groups. This leads, of course, to yet more cheating. 
Estimates of guide income range as high as Y250,000 per annum. This 
seems too high to be credible, but obviously sums beyond the wildest 
dreams of most Chinese, even those well-educated, are being earned (if 
'earned' is the right term).

Furthermore, sadly, there are few people less well-informed about their 
own history and culture than the Chinese, although this is only partly 
their own fault. The education system and the media in China rarely 
permit them access to any alternative or contrary view of their own 
history than the very palatable views which stress the greatness and 
longevity of Han culture. They could not give you accurate information 
even if they wanted to, because they don't have it. Materials you bring 
from overseas, while not without their problems if they are the popular 
guide books, will be far more accurate and authoritative.

Guides tend to say what is convenient, what will please most, what the 
customer wants to hear, what will impress the customer most, and 
ultimately what will lead to the best financial outcome. The truth, 
even if known, will not come out if unpalatable.

Most visitors simply assume that a native Chinese guide must be more 
knowledgeable and more of an authority than any book they may carry (in 
truth, some books are just as inaccurate, but in different ways). So 
one is treated to risible stories of motorbike tours of the countryside 
around Guilin which are supposed to be the only way to get an authentic 
glimpse of the countryside, and from which tourists return convinced 
(because their guide-interpreter told them) that the old lady they just 
met had never seen foreigners before nor heard of America. Somehow, 
despite the presence of television, radio, newspapers, and hundreds of 
other villagers with opinions to air, and living in proximity to one of 
the most heavily visited towns in China, she's not heard about the 
Belgrade embassy bombing, and the collision between the US and Chinese 
planes near Hainan, to name just two events which have filled the media 
with mentions of the US in recent years. And that's setting aside a 
century of migration to the US from rural areas of southern China, the 
myths that grew up as a result, and the stories of the returnees. Of 
course, she's been telling Americans for years that she's never heard 
of their country--the guides who bring her foreigners know their 
customers like to hear this and will feel as a result they've had a 
truly rural experience. Will the government promotes China's modernity, 
the tourism industry promotes its backwardness. What's perhaps more sad 
still is that visitors swallow all this.

Returning to historical and cultural information, and taking the Silk 
Routes as examples (since someone else asked about guides in the 
northwest), you won't be hearing from them how recent an addition to 
Chinese control Xinjiang is (or that it was foreign rulers who annexed 
it to their own empire, gave it its slightly giveaway name of 'New 
Territory', and that it somehow became part of China with the collapse 
of the dynasty). You won't be hearing about Yakub Beg and a temporarily 
independent Kashgaria, about scepticism as to whether Marco Polo ever 
came to China (of course he did, and he took pasta back to Italy and 
told the West of the glories of Chinese civilisation [even if it was 
the Mongol court he may have visited]), or about Uighur discontent 
(none--the minorities are happy and they sing, dance, and love the 
Han). It will be made clear that art you'll see had nothing to do with 
imported Central Asia or Indo-Pakistani or Greek influences, but was 
the result of Chinese artists selecting from foreign art to make 
something progressive but inherently Chinese. Despite the 7000-year-old 
Indo-European mummies in Urumqi's Xinjiang Provincial Museum, you'll be 
told that the Chinese were there first, and that Xinjiang has always 
been an inalienable part of Chinese territory.

Ho hum. How useful to hear it from the horse's mouth.

To some extent the advice proffered by an anonymous other that only 
non-Chinese guides should be taken is quite good, but other than 
filling in the background on some of their own difficulties, and 
playing up stories of oppression (quite unnecessarily, minority guides 
are pretty much up to the same game.

Altogether then, given the misinformation, gross overcharging, and 
cheating, and given the comprehensiveness of China's public transport 
and the ubiquity of its taxis, it's difficult to make a case where the 
benefit of convenience overcomes the drawbacks of getting involved with 
guides and local tour companies. There are cases where one-day tours 
can enable you conveniently to see sights which might take two days on 
public transport, and where the cost and potential hassles of hiring a 
taxi for the day might exceed the price for the tour and the 
tiresomeness of compulsory shopping stops (the day tours run by CITS in 
Datong have been cited on this list as one example), but in general 
it's better to get on with doing things yourself, simply using tour 
agencies for ticket booking where convenient.

No doubt some will view this criticism as overly robust, but it's 
intended to encourage more visitors to China to understand that the 
models of tourism they may be used to in their own countries do not 
necessarily apply to China, to counter rather a lot of foolishness, and 
encourage visitors to China to go with their eyes open. Are there 
honest guides? Perhaps, but you'll never really know. Undoubtedly there 
are guides who think they are honest--somehow in China its cheating 
when you do it to me, but just good business when I do it to you, 
especially if you are a foreigner or even just an out-of-towner.

The best travel companions in China are those met accidentally and who 
help out merely for the pleasure of a new experience, of practicing 
their English or learning about foreign places,  or simply out of 
courtesy to strangers from whom they do not expect to profit. Sadly, 
such encounters cannot be planned. More sadly still, there's an 
increasing number of individuals who do plan apparently artless 
encounters; "Hello, I'm a student..."

Peter N-H
http://members.axion.net/~pnh/China.html