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!