If you ever been around Shanghai’s People’s Square and Nanjing West Road, you’ve seen them — the shoe shine guys. They’ve got their little foot bench that doubles as a carryall for their oily rags and 3-kuai tube of shoe polish.
If you work in that area of Shanghai these guys will pester you. Two or three times a day when I leave the office, I hear “Hey Laowai, hey shoe shine, shoe shine 10 yuan very good hey!” I usually keep right on walking even if my shoes are dirty. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the service these guys are trying to offer, it’s the way they go about getting my business. They try to catch you and run you down threatening to drip shoe polish on your shoes forcing you to stop and let them wipe it off. Then two or three of them will fight to clean your shoes and argue with you over how much you should pay them.
If anybody starts to chase me down the street or interrupting my conversation, he’s already got no chance of selling to me. I see this as a big problem in China among a lot of the street peddlers you see out there. They only seem to know one style of selling — hunting down the customer and forcing their product upon him. Eventually this is going to get one of them arrested or at least in trouble with the police.
I know that this isn’t the right forum to appeal to street peddlers but if they all just stood in one place offering their services and not chasing down customers they’d get a lot more business. It doesn’t have to be fancy stools or leather chairs like those in many airports, just out of the way and out of my hair, but they’re there when I need you. I’ve seen this in other cities such as Guangzhou and the street peddlers hardly have a minute free. In contrast, those in Shanghai tend to spend much of their time sitting around trying to scope out new targets to hit and that’s a waste of their resources.
Any other laowais encounter situations like this in other parts of China?
I think the taxis act like this in Sanya, especially. They will nearly run you down honking and shouting “laowai! dadonghai!” as you try to cross the street or stand at the bus stop. I go out of my way to never get into any taxi that has acted that way!
In Guangzhou I once fixed a price for a shine for 3 Kwai – which was a bit high but it was hot and I couldn’t be bothered to argue. It’s 2 Kwai in Lanzhou. When I got up to go she tried to get 10 Kwai out of me. At that precise moment a middle aged Chinese lady passed us, heard the demand and told the girl not try to rip me off!.
I wouldn’t have paid but it was just great to have that happen.
I find it amusing when they try to shine my shoes when I walk by wearing sandals.
At the (apparently deceased?) market outside the Terracotta Warriors in Xi’an, I wondered if any of the traders noticed that the only stall I actually stopped to look at was the one one where no-one actually shouted at me, grabbed me or otherwise tried to propel me in their direction. If they had, the might have concluded that (at least with British tourists) that a more softly, softly approach was more appropriate.
Having said that, it was only a matter of timing as shortly after we commenced haggling that a man appeared who no doubt should have been the ‘propeller’ had he been there. Perhaps he should be paid a small commission for staying at home.
I sympathise with the shoeshine price hike problem. I’ve found that the only solution is to fish in my pocket and pull out the starting price and say that apart from that I have no money. Whenever they ask about wax, special polishes I remind them that they can do what they like but I still only have the starting price.
Someone’s still tried to get 20 kuai out of me after being told repeatedly that I have only two but the two kuai in the hand reduces the arguing.
Actually, I wish there were more shoes shine guys/women here in Shanghai and then hopefully with a bit more tact then the ones you describe and I run into as well in that area.
When I lived in Kunming there were many, the price was 1 Rmb and they mostly catered to the Chinese as it was a very normal thing to have your shoes polished.
Here in Shanghai it seems to have become a tourist trap/attraction.
Best price I got by the way here is 5 Rmb on Nanjing Lu.
That’s nearly the same selling strategy as the sellers working in Beijing’s Silk Street, and they don’t have beggary as an excuse.
I hadn’t seen the “shoe polish drip” tactic until yesterday — is it a recent addition to their arsenal? It seems like the sort of thing that is going to end up with someone kicking a shoeshiner, and then getting jumped by a gang of them. The upside, at least, would be that a high profile incident would probably get the police to do something about it for at least a few weeks…
I work near the old fake market that has been closed on Huahai road, and every time after getting out the line 1 subway I have to fight off at least four WATCHBAGDVD guys…
I am going to venture out and say that most Chinese people conduct business in a typically ‘more agressive’ manner, not just street peddlers. I wandered into a nice looking tea shop the other day, just wanting to check it out and see if I could buy some cheap jasmine tea (of course not) and was followed around by a lady who felt obliged to ask me if i wanted this or that or this or that…. it got on my nerves so i left. But I have been to countless stores (not street vendor stalls) where I am either just followed around or things are suggested to me, which makes me think it might just be cultural thing.
I had a shoe shine guy run up and put polish on the shoe of a big client of mine. This was a global CEO of a big multi-national who had not been to China before.
I was shocked and was about to lay into the shoeshine guy when the CEO casually grabbed the shoeshine guy by the jacket and used the shoeshine guy’s own sleve to wipe off the polish.
He did it so smoothly and casually, I was so impressed. I did leave the shoeshine guy with the parting coment that I’d be back to look for hima nd kick the crap out of him if I could.
I’ve had the drip treatment in Shanghai. I live in Guizhou where the price is 1-2 RMB (never been asked for more) and the show shine folks who are almost always women have a folding chair set up and they quietly wait for customers. Some may suggest a shoe shine, in Chinese – this is Guizhou after all, as you pass but they don’t chase you.
Only in Shanghai have I seen the roving shoe shiners who even after being repeatedly told “no” continue to follow and request. Down near the Bund last summer the gentleman did actually run in front of me, stoop down and squirt polish. I felt bad but I had repeatedly said “no” so I walked on and wiped off my shoe later.
Does this make me a jerk?
No, that makes the shoe shine scam artist a jerk.
If you ever walk down Nanjing Lu, there’s also a lot of random women trying to sell pretty young women to lao wai. They see lao wai and then run up to me and ask if I like pretty girls and ask if I want to meet one and do something or other with her, then I keep walking and not responding to the xiao fan, but the xiao fan will follow me for about 5 minutes before my patience runs out and I finally tell them, “Bu yao. Cao ni ma.”
The other scam that is really annoying is the fake taxi drivers and van drivers at every single train or bus station in China. Whenever lao wai arrives at a station, black market taxi drivers will be like, “Taxi! Taxi! Taxi! [300 RMB]” Even in Nanjing Train Station, they are actually yelling “Taxi!” at lao wai while standing under the real taxi sign.
And at rural stations like E Mei City bus station, they will try to scam you with a 20 RMB ride to E Mei Mountain and tell you that there isn’t a public bus that goes there. Then you ask the bus driver waiting outside the station, and his bus goes there for 2 RMB.