June 6, 2023
Mandarin Immersion (Part 22)
By Simon J. Lau
I returned from what may have been the worst tour I’ve ever been part of. However, it wasn’t all bad, so maybe I should start with what was good. Tiger Leaping Gorge, a scenic canyon, is located on a primary tributary along the upper Yangtze River. Legend has it that a tiger, seeking to escape death at the hands of a hunting party, leaped across the canyon. It used the boulder at the narrowest part of the canyon as a stepping stone to clear this channel. If true, this tiger deserved to live and forever be revered.
The next highlight was Dukezong, a town in Shangri-La. This area is part of the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. Much of what is now Diqing, including Dukezong, was part of the Tibetan Empire before it fell to the Qing dynasty in the 18th century. Although it’s no longer part of Tibet, many Tibetan ethnic minorities still live here. In fact, my driver and tour operator was Tibetan.
For lunch, and as a final highlight, our tour operating brought us to his home to enjoy a traditional Tibetan meal. His wife served up a small feast that included bread, soup, veggies, jerky, and hard liquor. The kitchen setup was also very neat. They didn’t allow pictures (this photo is of his neighbor’s home), but I found this site that did a nice job of describing a traditional Tibetan home.
This is where the good parts end and the bad parts begin. The wife then spent the next half hour making a really intense sales pitch to have us buy her overpriced teas. As the only foreigner, I was mostly spared from this pitch. However, my time was not.
We also wasted time at a so-called grassland reserve. Instead, it was a disgusting place where a ton of vendors were making high-pressure sales pitches to buy horse riding “experiences.” Many of the horses were malnourished, and some were injured. All were forced to work.
Not surprisingly, few people bought a horse riding package. In our group, only a mother and child did. In fact, my guide was so frustrated with us that he turned to me. It’s a sad day when you turn to the unemployed foreign tourist to help you make ends meet, but here we were. We wasted another hour waiting for the mother and child to return from their ride. It was the longest hour of my life. In that time, my guide tried to educate me. He said that I’m not Chinese American (as I’ve rightly referred to myself), and that I am, in fact, simply Chinese.
This brings up an interesting point. The Chinese language has a variety of words to describe “overseas Chinese.” The most general form roughly translates into “of Chinese heritage” (华人). Within this category, there is “born in China, but living abroad” (华侨). Since this is very relevant to me in describing my Chinese heritage, I’ve spent a great deal of time studying these distinctions. Occasionally, some locals like to argue with me. However, I simply let them know that they are wrong. As was the case here. 🥲
To cap off this horrible experience, I decided to try Luckin Coffee. This company is one of the largest coffee chains in China. It went public on Nasdaq in 2019. Less than a year later, it was discovered that they had committed widespread accounting fraud. Not surprisingly, the stock tumbled, and it was eventually delisted. Similarly, I had (unknowingly) engaged in a fraud. In this case, more of my time was spent on nonsense than on quality experiences. The only appropriate way to cap off this scam was with a Luckin.
Moving forward, I’ll never buy another tour package from a Chinese operator. I was on the road for 14 hours, and I spent less than 2 hours seeing the sites that I had paid for. To say that I’m a little salty about this experience would be an understatement. Final grade: D/D+
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