Souvenirs for Chinese guides
 

We will be in China for 3 weeks. Other Americans have told us that it is nice to bring some kind of token souvenir to give to guides, people who do "favors" for you, etc. Any ideas? We live near Niagara Falls, NY/Canada and I'm told the Chinese people in tourism know about the Falls and like souvenirs from there. Not sure of this info. Any suggestions?

It is true Chinese visitors to North America often include Niagara Falls in their itineraries (which also include Las Vegas in addition to what you might expect). Guides would probably most appreciate cash, in this year of very low business. Otherwise, good gifts could be keyrings from the Falls, cigarette lighters with a picture of them if available, postcards, etc.

I usually give perfume or perfurmed body cream to female guides and good pens to male guides. While some of these items are available in China anway, sometimes the cost is higher than the guide could afford.

The assumption that guides would prefer cash is correct, but there is no tipping in China save what foreigners are misled into giving within the confines of organized tours.

The average tour guide is doing very well indeed--way above most other middle class Chinese and with an income in the stratosphere compared to the average Chinese, so there is very little that he or she cannot afford for him- or herself. Please be aware that guides are making a very great deal of money from kick-backs at restaurants, sights, and, most of all, shopping, where you are advised to spend as much as ten to 15 times what you need to spend, and the guide takes 40%. Some are now making so much money that the local companies who supply them to the tour operators no longer pay them salaries, but instead let the tour go to the highest bidder, so that a share of the graft comes their way. Those tour operators who understand the system are now tying up local companies with careful contract provisions to keep shopping 'opportunities' to a maximum of one per city, for instance, but are having to pay large sums in compensation if they want a guide with decent English for you. And the guides are still doing well from other kick-backs, all of which end up as expenses to you eventually, but which they smilingly regard as fair business practice.

Some tour guides are 'earning' (perhaps 'obtaining' would be better) as much as (I hope you are sitting down) 400 times as much as a factory worker. Naturally they go out of their way to be pleasant, and do "favors"; but the "favors" are indeed best enclosed in quotation marks, as they are very often two-way ones. The silk is very firmly over the average tourist's eyes.

Of course, to generous-hearted people used to living in an environment where tipping is the norm (it's only for gullible foreign tourists in China), where costs are so much different, and where tour-guide scamming exists but is relatively limited, this may all come as an ugly surprise. But those involved in the tourism industry have regularly seen, for instance, a sweet young female guide with a beatific smile advising a tourist to pay Y70 for a fake coin worth Y2 at most, and seen that person grateful because the first asking price was Y120, and later tip the guide. And this happens to all tour groups, all the time, but often for four-figure sums or more, not two-figure ones.

Its the lame, mutilated, mentally unsound, disfigured, and simply wretchedly poor, of whom you'll see plenty outside the tour bus who need your assistance, not those on board it, who are doing very well, whether driver or guide.

But regardless of all this, there is no tradition in China of tipping or giving gifts under these circumstances--setting aside the rampant dishonesty for a minute, the tour guides are already being paid a (better than) fair rate for their work, and in China the price agreed for a service, which is anyway always higher for foreigners, is the price paid. The giving away of extra freebies on top astonishes most Chinese, who would never do such a thing themselves, even if the tour guide were badly paid. Neither custom nor etiquette in China require it. If the tour guide were truly honest the gift would be firmly refused, or only accepted after major persuasion.
site, and it often leads to pointless rows, because it sounds 'cheap'. But China is not North America, nothing runs the same way there, and very little of what's presented to the tourist is quite what it seems. What is presented is what's most profitable to the presenter.

Here's an anecdote with a slightly sweeter taste: During my last period of residence in Beijing I got back from a business trip to Ji'nan late at night, and was chatting happily with the taxi driver on the way back to my apartment, catching up on the latest Beijing news. Getting out of the cab, I accidentally abandoned a small digital camera, worth about two months' income for the cabbie. Realizing while still in the lift what I'd done, I took the lift-operator's advice and called the number on the receipt the driver had given me, and gave the details of where I'd been picked up and dropped off, and various information from the receipt itself. 20 minutes later the cab driver called me on his mobile. He had the camera, and where would I like it delivered? He was on the other side of town already, but he drove to my apartment again, and called me as he arrived. In the meantime, knowing that in this kind of case some sort of compensation would be appropriate, I'd spoken to Chinese friends for advice. I think (for some reason) Y150 was settled on (or it might have been a little more). Not only would he not accept the money, but he hadn't even started the meter on the run to return the camera, so I couldn't even judge how much to pay him for his time. Three times he refused the money, but I eventually got him to take it by the time-honoured method of having it folded up in my hand and practically forcing it into his with a kind of handshake. All honour was satisfied--he'd politely resisted as firmly as anyone could, and I'd 'forced' him to take the money. To me it was little compared to the loss I nearly sustained. To him it was a 50% bonus on a day's income. Honesty, rather than dishonesty, was rewarded.

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

I have used private guides in China and have never been taken shopping or to restaurants. We alwyas make it clear that shopping and sotps at restaurants are not an interest of ours, and it has never been an issue. Perhaps a large tour is different. However, if you are happy with the service, there is nothing wrong with giving a gift.

I consider it a courtesy on my part to give a gift, and do so if the service is good. While the guide may make a good living, I certainly make much a better one and don't begrudge them the gift.

I don't really concern myself with what the local custom is, I have given gifts to guides the world over, including the US. If this makes me look like a rube, I really don't care; I always feel that good service deserves to be rewarded. I am always glad that I can afford to be generous, even when it is not expected.

Peter wrote "Some tour guides are 'earning' (perhaps 'obtaining' would be better) as much as (I hope you are sitting down) 400 times as much as a factory worker."

Is there some reason a person with a college degree who works often more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week between April and October, should make less than a factory worker? Is it right that a factory worker makes terribly low wages? Would the factory worker become a tour guide if he/she had the education and opportunity??

I know several people in the China tour industry and the quoted figure of 40 percent is way out of line even for those who do get commissions from shopping. I also know it is not uncommon for doctors, teachers and others to expect and receive what I would consider "bribes" for just doing the job they are supposed to be doing.

Chinese tour guides make extremely low wages from their travel services and rely on tips. They make NOTHING in the off-season, much like construction workers don't make money when it rains. Depending on tips is similar to waiters/waitresses in other countries who make a pittance from their employer and wouldn't do the job if they couldn't rely on decent tips for good service. How much do you tip restaurant servers, Peter?

Why do you begrudge these people a good income?

Elizabeth

I don't know why people always get so heated about these issues--these are just the facts of the Chinese tourism industry, which is riddled with corruption from top to bottom. How an individual reacts to that is entirely up to him or her. Personally, I prefer to follow local norms, but you may just want to go your own way, and that's entirely up to you.

To take the last (and unnecessarily personal) point in Elizabeth's post first, on tipping servers in restaurants I follow local custom. If it's 10% to 15% that's what I give (unless service is very poor). In China there is no tipping, and so, like all Chinese, I leave nothing. This also has the benefit that I don't have a waitress tearing down the street after me to return my change. If that isn't happening to you in China, you are eating in the wrong restaurants.

To tackle Elizabeth's other points:

I have no opinion whatsoever on how salaries should be structured in China. I do think, however, that they should be earned honestly, and that dishonesty should not be rewarded. Others may differ.

The factory worker does indeed make terribly low wages, and there is much need of reform, but it's the very many languishing at home unpaid, or still working but with their wages months or years in arrears, who really need sympathy. That's anyway not to the point. And the idea that tour guides are rewarded fairly while factory workers are not, is mistaken.

It is estimated by one tourism professor that the top 10% of tour guides in Beijing and Shanghai are earning around Y200,000 per annum (roughly US$25,000), and some guides even admit to US$30,000. This is a mixture of salary, tips, and kick-backs; mostly the latter--money obtained dishonestly and mostly at your expense.

Setting aside the honesty issue, if this doesn't sound much, that's only because there's little idea outside China of real costs and real income levels there. According to the Chinese government's own figures (certainly inflated), the average income of an *employed* person in Shanghai, the country's highest average, is about $1242. Most urban centres have average incomes of half this or less, and in the countryside incomes are far less still. But some tour guides are actually receiving nearly twenty times as much as the highest average urban income in the country.

If education is to be an issue in deciding fair pay as suggested (but not an argument I'm attempting to engage here), it might be worth noting that some tours guides are therefore receiving many multiples of the salary of a university professor (at least 50 times), and about 200 times that of a middle school teacher (who earn their pay if not always entirely honestly, then much more so). According to the argument (not mine) that pay should be in proportion to education, the situation is clearly grossly unjust.

The figure of a 40% kick-back is given by tour guides and tour operators themselves, and I'm not the only one to have recorded it on this site in the past. No doubt some kick-backs are less, but the general movement is yet further upward, not downward. And quibbling over a digit or two on this figure does not affect the overall situation on the size of incomes nor the methods by which those incomes are obtained.

I can't make any sense of the argument that others are dishonest, and so it's perfectly acceptable for tour guides to be so. "You cheat each other so it's all right to cheat me." Of course, the whole structure of Chinese society is different, and dishonesty towards outsiders publicly derided, but privately very widely condoned, and sadly commonplace. The question is, should this dishonesty be further rewarded by the outsiders who are being duped? Certainly no Chinese would say so, (unless, of course, they are the individuals doing the duping).

It is not the case simply that tour guides make extremely low wages from tour companies. Some make perfectly adequate wages, and some get no salary at all! But they PAY the tour company for the right to lead the tour, as already mentioned. Nevertheless, the local tour company still pockets the large fee from the foreign tour company, which you, of course, have paid. The tour guides pay the tour company because the salary is a pittance compared to the other income from tipping and kick-backs. The costs mostly end up in your pocket. You pay the full entrance price for the site, the guide (or sometimes the tour company) takes a fat cut of that. The guide then encourages you to shop in the overpriced gift shop and the site does very well from that, even after a further cut to the guide.

Nor should we feel sorry for tour guides who supposedly earn nothing in the off season, since they have very substantial annual incomes anyway, and work less for them than most Chinese do for much lesser incomes. It's actually estimated that they work in excess of 250 days a year, so their down time is pretty limited. But even if they had yet more time off, and were feeling the pinch on paying the mortgage on that second apartment, there are hotels galore and other businesses crying out for good English speakers, and no difficulty to make money from other sources, should they wish.

The sole purpose here is to set out some of the very ugly realities of the Chinese tour business, so that those considering gifts or gratuities can do so in the context of the facts. These, in the simplest terms, is that tour guides are doing extremely well and doing so largely at your expense, and that in China (as in Japan, New Zealand, and many other countries) there is no tradition or custom of tipping guides (or taxi drivers or waitresses--who all work harder and longer hours), or anyone else.

What you actually do in China is up to you. But if you regard not tipping as 'cheap', you're accusing a nation of 1.3 billion people of being 'cheap'. But they are entitled to have their own customs.

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

I don't think these 'ugly realities' are exclusive to the Chinese tour business. I believe the majority of tour companies worldwide engages in the practice of receiving kickbacks from shops, restaurants, etc. I'm not condoning it, but you make it sound like this 'dishonesty' exists only in China.

Wow! It certainly is eye-opening to read these message boards. Maybe the whole Asia section should be renamed "Let's Yell At Peter When He Tells Us About The Ugly Realities Of Real Life In China". From most of the posts, Peter appears to be one of the very few on these forums who has actually lived in China and speaks from extensive first hand experience. So listen to what he has to say. You don't have to embrace it, but don't dismiss it because it offends your subliminal desire to act like an ugly American and impose your cultural patterns on another people. If the Chinese customarily do not tip or give "tokens" to people who have performed contracted services, then don't do it. Its their country and customs that you go to experience; why pollute that, even with something so seemingly inconsequential. If you do, then you hasten the demise of that culture.

Gee Jason, I don't see anyone here YELLING at Peter. In my case I was simply pointing out that kickbacks are common in the tour industry worldwide and most travelers aren't so blind that they're not aware of its existance. And I know that at least one poster who has responded to this thread isn't American, so perhaps you should stop stereotyping.

The average Chinese factory worker - get this! Are you sitting down? - makes "400" times more than the average Chinese peasant.

So, Peter has discovered that capitalism is alive and well and kicking in a "Communist" country.

He sounds like he is, with all his lecturing, terribly young or naive or both.

Reading his every word, I come away tired from all the bombastic lecturing.

No, you are wrong - there IS a custom of tipping and of gift giving which predates you and me both. Every trip I have made into China I have carefully carried in bottles of expensive liquor and sheets and sheets of colorful stamps (which the Chinese love to collect) among other gifts.

Gift giving is an art form in Asia. If you don't know what to give, ask discreetly your local contact - he/she will hardly ever misguide you.

As for tipping the tour guide, I tip my tour guides wherever I am in the world, because it is a message from me of my appreciation for their work - whether they get zero or $1 million as salary. As a matter of fact, how much they make is totally irrelevant. My tip is my way of telling them that they did a good tour and I appreciate it.

My tip is not a huge amount - one or two euros in Europe is enough. The tour guides have always smiled in appreciation.

And if you think the add-ons are outrageous, then why don't you check out what American Express adds on? Talk about excessive...

Or Nike shoes, for what they pay the Indonesians or Koreans... or...or...

To rail against the Chinese tour guides for trying to make some money is truly mind-boggling when you consider how much American companies are making, riding on the backs of poorly-paid workers in other countries...

Just my opinion.

Jason