I arrived at the Beijing airport about an hour-and-forty-five minutes before my flight, which should be plenty of time for a domestic flight in China. I walked over to the monitor to see whether my flight was running on schedule, and a woman in professional dress wearing a nametag asked me which flight I was on and if she could see my ticket. I showed her my ticket, and she said “oh, you’re very late, must hurry! Follow me” and she and her partner in crime led me to a check-in line. She elbowed her way to the front (this would have been more impressive had there been more than one person in front of me), spoke to the man behind the counter, had me come up and check my bag, handed me my boarding pass, and then started talking money.

At first I didn’t understand what she wanted. Something about “flight money” or “airport money”. I had already paid for the ticket. Then it dawned on me that she didn’t work for the airline, but just wanted money for “helping” me. I figured she had probably saved me about 4 minutes of standing in line, so I pulled out what seemed to me to be a decent tip, 10 RMB. She looked upset and asked for 50. I should have walked away. I said I didn’t have 50. She lowered the price down to 10 for her and 10 for her confederate. I checked my wallet and found 15, happy to give it to herso I could leave without further disrupting the social harmony. Then she spotted another 5 in my wallet.

So she got 20 RMB out of me, which is the literal equivalent of $2.50 and the functional equivalent of $6. What a scam.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 6:03 am and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.