Tipping in China
 

What are the rules on tipping in China?

Tour guide if they're okay/good.

Nobody else.

From my TR:

BTW,
Tipping was a confusing topic before we left. What the guide told us is no tipping for the restaurants or taxi-cabs. They didn't seem to expect it either. HOwever she said say to tip the porters $1 USD /bag. The tour info said $1-2 USD/person. So, we did do that. Of course the guide and drivers got tips. Most were very good, 3 out of the 4 guides were excellent.

I only ever tip when deserved. Routine tipping like in America encourages low wages.

A guide I had on a tour to the Great Wall years ago left us at some rubbish shop for two hours on the way there where no one bought anything so she got no commission and she only wanted to give us 45 minutes at the Wall. Some were back on time, I stayed 90 minutes and she almost dragged back two women after me. She didn't get the time of day off of me.

If you hire a private guide or in a small tour group, you may want to pre-negotiate with him or her before departure about shopping. Like a big tip privately, but no or limited shopping.

Just think about why they bring you to shop. It's because the guide fees is not enough income for them. So, you can give the guide the big tip upfront, so that he/she will give you time at the main sites; or you will end up in the shops for most part of the day and you're not happy.

I'll pick the former.

Just say NO. I have several friends in China, and have travelled there on leisure trips four times for a total of eight weeks in the past year. The Chinese tip people in China as frequently as we spit on our dinner plates before we eat.

This goes for everyone everywhere. Chinese do not tip their tour guides, their baggage handlers. The tour guides to Westerners will whine, "We do not get paid by Chinese company. We rely on your tips." That is not true, just another rip-off.

I repeat, no tour guides and no porters are tipped by Chinese. They receive decent wages for their occupation and skill levels. In fact, you will find some Chinese (not the tour guides who also took unrevealed kickbacks at your factory/shopping/refreshment break stops) will feel insulted by offering a tip.

Don't tip, ever. Westerners that tip are introducing new element(expectations and wage pressures) into a economy that is doing very well without it, regardless of the customs we may want to force upon it. Anyone in China who says that they rely on your tips, is just simply lying to you.

Tour guides in China make their money from kickbacks from your purchases at stores (no matter what you hear, all of them do it). This is neither good nor bad - just a way of doing business. rkkwan's strategy above about tipping vs. shopping is a great way to handle this.

The only exception (and this is only my personal preference-my Chinese friends would disagree adamantly) is tip if you received EXCEPTIONAL service. In my six years in China, I've only done this a handful of times.

I rarely tip in China but this thread reminds me of an interesting conversation I had in Canada recently. I took a metered taxi from the airport to my hotel downtown. Upon arrival at the hotel, the driver told me the fare which was much higher than the meter and would not open the truck so I could get my luggage until I paid him. When I questioned him on the amount, he confessed it included "his tip". I informed him tipping was purely discretionary and that people don't tip at all in China to which he replied "Well, you're not in China now, are you?"

Ruben:

Been to China twice, most recently this past spring. Have never tipped anyone.

stu t.

Just use good judgement. If you think they deserve it, then give them a tip. The tour group leader I had last year in Beijing did a solid job and she deserved her $20 tip I gave her at the end of the 4 days I was there.

I always tip for bags in hotels and it depends as I teipped when I got bar food in the Irish pub but never normally as I have never seen tipping in China. My Chinese friend Guised me along in protocal and will always help me and answers my questions. She has lived in Europe and China and tells me also no one tips. Taxi drivers i do tip but we use one person a lot as a driver and i have no problem giving him a tip as he often does favours or errands for us when over on business.

"If you think they deserve it, then give them a tip."

- DonJ, with respect, surely this reflects North American, not Chinese, attitudes? US$20 for 4 days is 40 yuan per day. Your tip alone (and I assume that wasn't the only remuneration your guide earned in those 4 days?) is the equivalent of about Y900 a month, which actually amounts to a living wage in China. If several members of your tour group paid such a tip - no, the fact is she couldn't have deserved such a windfall. (Unless I'm missing something.)

And US$1-2 per bag for porters? Absurd. Ridiculous. Nonsensical. Those, surely, are AMERICAN rates for porters, not Chinese (which, as several posters have pointed out, actually amount to $0 per bag).

A Chinese porter in a hotel containing a fair number of American customers would soon become a tycoon at that rate.

It seems to me that by throwing around dollars in a country with no tradition whatever of tipping, we westerners are contributing to a weird distortion in the economy whereby people in the (foreign) tourism and hospitality industry have access to riches beyond the dreams of other Chinese workers, except perhaps merchant bankers and the growing army of BMW salesmen.

I'm with Neil. I've lived in the U.S. long enough (30 years) to have developed a tipping reflex, but I'm always happy to be in a country where it's not the practice.

While I've developed the reflex, I don't understand the attitude that makes some people defend tipping where it's not the practice. I'm all in favor of paying people a living wage, and not requiring customers to pay for service separately. And just because a living wage is different in different countries, that's not a good argument for tipping.

I have a different opinion of tipping.

Western and Easterners have been traveling and visiting each others countries for hundreds of years. We all have our different cultures.

For hundreds of years Americans have been traveling to China and tipping. Has it changed the Chinese culture into a tipping society? I think not. Has it trained the Chinese to expect tips from Americans? Probably.

I think the older world societies such as the Chinese tend to hold on to their culture and be influenced but not taken over by other peoples cultures as they have practiced their ways of life for thousands of years.

Newer world societies such as Australia with a very new society(minus the Aborigines) have only a couple of hundred years of developing culture so are still developing their habits and are more easily affected by outside influences. They are caught between a SE Asian culture but with many, many Western influences which is why the country is now struggling with the tipping issue imho.

America is another new society which brought a lot of our traditions from Europe with us(so blame the Brits for the tipping, lol).

Bottom line is you won't change the Chinese mentality to not to tip. No matter how hard you try.

If you don't believe me then try to do something to elicit a tip from a Chinese person when in China. Bet you dollars to dough nuts(another American expression) you won't get one.

Aloha!

I don't tip and have no experience with guides. In rare instances where I received outstanding service, would give a small gift of appreciation. We have also invited our day trip taxi drivers to lunch with us, and sent them photos when they voluntarily accompanied us on our trips instead of smoking/sleeping in the cab while waiting for us.

hawaiiantraveler - whatever happened to "when in Rome do as the Romans do"? Do you advocate flaunting bare skin in countries where the locals cover up? If not, why advocate tipping where it's not the custom? Can you explain why you have a problem with not tipping? Because I'm really puzzled.

thursdayd,

Just another American saying, I think it that came from a Hollywood movie.You've been influenced :)

And I DO NOT mind people not tipping. To each their own. I don't know where that thought comes from about Americans.

We DO NOT tip if we don't want to.

It is NOT a requirement for any of us to always tip.

I NEVER feel in ANY situation that I have to tip but leave myself open to the option to do so if someone has been very kind to me. Sorry thats the way I was brought up. I guess you could say my culture.....I'm guilty :(

Everyone is guilty of spreading their cultures around the world. Sounds like a disease....not

Aloha!

sorry posted too soon

and of course I don't advocate flaunting bare skin around anywhere. I thought we were talking about tipping

Aloha!

We're talking abut tipping, yes. I'm talking about it in the context of respecting other people's customs and culture.

Oh, and I thought "when in Rome" was a bit older than Hollywood, so I checked. According to wiktionary: "First attested in mediaeval Latin: si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi: "if you are in Rome, live in the Roman way; if you are elsewhere, live as they do there" (attributed to St Ambrose)." Seems this argument's been around a while!

so we now have to follow the Roman culture?

Sorry, but I really feel you guys are analyzing this too much. I really do not see tipping as a culture in the traditional sense. There's nothing in the Chinese culture that says tipping shouldn't be done.

Or the culture of US is mostly the same Christian/Western Europe (i.e. not Arabic/Muslim, not Chinese/Asian, not sub-Suhara African). But we tip in the US but not in Italy.

It's just something that comes out of local practice, which can change in a quick time, and has nothing to do with culture.

Another example, Hong Kong. If you go in 1996, you better tip all your servers, taxi drivers, bellboys, etc. But two years later, no tip necessary. No, it has nothing to do with Hong Kong reverting to Chinese rule. Instead, it's about the Asian Economic Crisis at that time. Economoy went to the drains, prices come down quickly. Tipping not necessary anymore.

That's it, folks!

sounds good to me!

"For hundreds of years Americans have been traveling to China and tipping. Has it changed the Chinese culture into a tipping society? I think not. Has it trained the Chinese to expect tips from Americans? Probably."

- hawaiiantraveler, I think we have to take into account the fact that China is so vast and populous that foreign tourism of any kind, let alone American, has barely made an impact outside of a few select areas, and none whatever in most of the country.

You can find plenty of neighbourhoods within walking distance of Tiananmen Square where you'll be the only non-local in sight and be an object of curiosity. In fact domestic tourism dwarfs the number of foreign visitors -after all, China has 1.3 billion people, a sizeable and rapidly growing proportion of whom can now afford to travel around their own country.

In future years many, many millions will also be able to travel to foreign destinations, including the US and Canada. So - all those American tourists training Chinese staff to expect big tips will be hugely outnumbered by Chinese tourists training American waiters not to expect any bloody tip at all.

Good morning Neil,

Americans are not the only ones that tip.

Is it an against tipping thing or an against Americans thing? Sounds to me like the latter.

I have already said all what I have to say on this matter in the above.

Aloha!

Actually my main point was that visitors who insist on tipping in China (and the many other places where the locals don't tip) should at least maintain a sense of proportion. I find itr difficult to credit that people can visit a foreign country with no sense of relative incomes, but for someone to recommend tipping Chinese porters $1 per bag* it must be happening. If that makes sense to you, you should be tipping American porters $10-15 per bag.

* LostinChina, I was thinking of your informant - then re-read your message and found it was your guide, who presumably was Chinese! I can only assume that in some convoluted way she was skimming the porters' tips - can't imagine how that would work, but mutual back-scratching is a highly developed art in China.

Neil,
The guide told us to tip $1 USD/bag. However the info in Swain Tours (our tour company) said to tip $1-2/person. I'm not sure what is right anymore, we just followed what the guide told us to do. THe guides and drivers did not seem to be surprised by the tips at all. There were guidelines in the Swain Tours info that told how much to tip the guides and drivers too.

I guess we took everything at face value while we were there, but maybe we were taken advantage of.

I suddenly remember something. We started "tipping" Chinese tour guides and drivers since the early days of the opening of China (i.e. ~1979) with Western cigarettes. Very popular with them. We gave them brands like "Kent" or "555".

Again, only tour guides and drivers. Nobody else.

I wouldn't sweat it too much, LostinChina - I fell for worse than that in China.

I just checked my assumptions with my two daughters, who returned from 3 years in China early this year. The nearest they got to tipping was an occasional "keep the change" offer to a cabbie. The responses ranged from "thanks" to mild offense, a sort of "do I look like a charity case?" reaction. Although they seldom saw the inside of an upscale hotel they suspected that things might be a little different there, but doubted that many Chinese guests would tip.

I've probably told this story before, but in Beijing we took a day tour to the Great Wall and Ming Tombs with a group that was about half Chinese, half foreign (including some Japanese, Thai and German people). It was very obvious that none of the locals had the slightest intention of tipping the guide, who in any event would have been doing pretty well out of the inevitable kickbacks from the compulsory "shopping opportunities" that we endured en route.

Something else I discovered was that the Chinese customers had paid a little more than half what foreigners staying in upmarket "western" hotels had paid (Y160 vs. Y300 pp). As we were virtually the only foreigners staying in our hotel, we got the "real" price too.

As a matter of interest, we just got back from two weeks in Bali, where a 5-10% service charge is commonly levied (maybe a reaction to the fact that most of their tourists come from Europe, Australia and other Asian countries, not least other Indonesians. On only one occasion did anyone try to extract a tip from us - a cheeky waitress in a restaurant in Legian, who had done nothing in particular to warrant it. I explained that even in the US, the protocol is that you actually return all the customer's change and leave the decision on how much to tip to him or her. Her method, not returning the change at all, was counter-productive.

Neil:
If I remember correctly, the tour guide said that the money we choose to tip them would have been divided between her, the driver and the other guide I had on my tour that picked us up from the airport. She said that $20 was usually the normal tip per person/family on this tour. Honestly, I really don't know or understand the dynamics of the kick backs and money these tour guides receive, but she did say that her salary alone is quite small and tipping helps supplement her income. There were about 20 people in my tour group and everyone gave their $20 without any hesitation. I thought they deserved it, but am I missing something here? Did I do something wrong here?

Don, to be honest I did the same thing in Vietnam at the end of a 3-week small group tour. It's hard to do anything else under the circumstances, even if you wanted to. I was really just ruminating on the fact that people working in certain tourism-related occupations are becoming very well-off people - almost certainly guides to western tourists (not domestic tourists) would be earning more than doctors in China.

By way of an anecdotal comparison, a close friend of my daughters, a university graduate with good English skills working in a mid-level admin job in a provincial capital, makes 1500 yuan (US$198) a month or about US$1/hr.

Shanghainese, you brought up something I've been wondering about: I am nearing the end of a 3-week stay in a small hotel in Beijing. The housekeeping service has been extraordinary and I was thinking I'd like to leave the women a small gift. Do you have any suggestions for something that would be appropriate?

It appears that there are a number of staff - some at more management levels and others who do the cleaning - and I was trying to come up with something they could share. All I can think of is candy or bakery cakes or the like, but that may just be insulting!

Thanks for any inspiration you can provide!
- ggreen

ggreen: That's very kind and thoughtful of you. For sharing, nice box of chocolates or a large cake (round or 1/4 sheet depending on the number of women) with '"thank you" written in chinese on it.

If you'd like give something individually, nice chocolate bars if there is a large number of women, or if a smaller number, some face or hand lotion (Lo'real, Olay, Dove).

Thanks Shanghainese! You've given me some good, concrete ideas. I will go out shopping and see what I come up with!

:) ggreen

gifting : China :: tipping : USA

We plan a 6-day trip into China from Hong Kong in November with travel agency ChinaTravelGuide. My husband & I will have a guide & driver. When asked about tipping policy, I received this answer: "What is the customary suggested tipping amount? Is the custom to tip daily or at the end of the trip?

If you are satisfied with the service offer by our guide and driver,
USD8.00 per person per day for the guide and USD4.00 per
person per day for the driver is expected. This is our suggestion
only. You can tip them at your convenience. And it doesn't matter whether you tip them daily or tip them at the end of the tour in each city. It's your choice."

From earlier posts on this topic, that amount sounds rather high ($48USD to guide; $24USD to driver).

I'd never use that agency again if they tell me how much to tip in China!

I wonder if they actually pay the guides and drivers...

As they're per-person rates the total would be US$96 + US$48. Depending how much work those guys got in a given month, it amounts to a pretty good income in China, even for the driver, and that excludes the usual kickbacks.

toedtoes has asked a very good question. In Vietnam we were asked by our (Australian) tour company to tip the tour leader (an Australian girl), guide and driver (Vietnamese). It amounted to good money in Vietnam, at least for the locals. Was this their only income? I was never able to determine that.

Neither my wife nor I are tight people, but we did wonder whether we were being asked to help create a sort of tourist-industry aristocracy in a country where there were so many more deserving cases, like orphanages.

And a good tour guide is usually expert at pitching for the sympathy vote, sometimes by creating what Hollywood would call a convincing "backstory" of personal suffering and deprivation. The best we've ever encountered was a Chinese immigrant who led a walking tour of SF's Chinatown. By the time he'd finished recounting his tales of poverty, famine and disease in the old country we were all sobbing and pressing moist bills into his hands.

If you join a tour in Hong Kong to China, catered to local Hong Kong people, they'll suggest a tip of 60HKD/RMB per person per day. That's about US$7.5, including guide and driver.