Several times recently I’ve been out at restaurants that I’ve been to frequently, only to discover they’ve been ripping me off for ages.
The trick is a smooth one and I can only blame my unfailing trust in humanity for allowing it to happen. The scam? The Laowai Menu.
Living in a tourism-supported city like Suzhou, even the smallest food spots in the downtown core tend to sport some form of English menu. Perhaps because the menus are quite clearly far-too-direct translations of Chinese dishes (ie. “the pig’s intestines soup”, “couple lung slices”, etc.), I always assumed the prices were as well.
However, after recently A-Bing the English and Chinese versions at a few random restaurants, I’ve come to learn that the prices are completely different – sometimes with nearly a 100% markup for what I can only assume is the added expense of having their menus masterfully translated.
Now, I’m fortunate in that more often then not I’m with my Chinese wife and ordering exclusively off the Chinese menu. I’m certainly in the minority though, and most of Suzhou’s (and by extension China’s) laowai “guests” are tourists, or corporate expats who unwittingly bend over and take it – all the while exchanging smiles for this “cultural experience”.
Ok, anyone that’s been here more than a couple months is likely to be a bit numb to my complaint, including myself. I’m well aware that shopping and eating out in China brings with it the assumption that you’re going to get the “Laowai Markup”. But I just can’t shake the feeling that my complacency about this is part of the reason it exists.
The simple fact is that I’m sure most of us in our home countries couldn’t imagine being given a different (and much inflated) menu based on our race or nationality. Can you imagine walking into a diner in San Francisco and being given the “Saudi” menu? Or in the UK being offered the “Blacks” menu?
I have to say that I have never knowingly encountered this in almost four and half years of living in China. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t ask for English menus that often (my character recognition is not that great but I know enough to place an order) or if I’ve just been lucky. I have heard about it, but all the stories seem to be from outside Shanghai (where I live). Anyone else think that is weird?
I’m sure it happens here but maybe it is better hidden than in other places?
J.
Happens in Italy where the prices are different depending on if you’ve the Italian menu, English menu or Japanese menu. As in China, you need to watch your back in Italy to make sure you’re not getting ripped off or pickpocketed.
Yeah, I’m fairly certain I’d have to burn that place down.
Wow, I knew this about Venice, but not China. Thanks for the helpful info.
Fortunately, the first place I lived had no English menus and didn’t rip off the foreigners (all 20 of us in the neighborhood). By the time I went out on my own travels, I had learned the basic characters on the menu (i.e. meats) and the right questions to ask about the food.
This is a huge problem in Sanya 三亚, another tourist supported economy. We always had to check to see if the prices on our menu and the one the next table had were the same. Then we would ask for the “local” price, and if we didn’t get it, walk out. Something to watch out for if you’re ever down in China’s tropical “paradise.” Along with the rampant pickpocketers.
One of my less proud moments was berating the manager of a dumpling restaurant near a youth hostel in Beijing.
There was a chalkboard outside listing (in Chinese) all kinds of delicious fillings– pumpkin, lamb, what have you– and all the prices were under 5 kuai /liang.
After a generous meal and a few g&t’s, my buddies and I were astounded when the bill came to more than 100 kuai. No way did 4 people consume several kilograms of dumplings.
I insisted that this was a mistake. So our waitress showed me an English menu that supported her case. I then pointed out the sign outside, and she gave back the money. I also yelled a lot.
Her audacity was just too much. The best part was that the manager sharply scolded her waitress: “If they speak Chinese with you, don’t try to cheat them.”
To this day I avoid places with any pretensions of English-language ability.
It happened to me in Shanghai once and was charged 2300 yuan for a couple drinks (a beer was 400RMB!!!). I wouldn’t have paid except I was surrounded by about ten people. I didn’t happen to have that much on me and walked away with only paying 1800. So use caution when you’re out there. Make sure you know the price before and that it’s reasonable.
I got pretty royally taken in Rome a few years back, and on Easter Sunday, too. Ironic thing is, I probably would have been better off with the tourist menus that have set prices. The waiter just kept bringing us food, and we kept eating it, chatting away the whole time in Italian.
Haven’t had too much of a problem in China, except at one chuan’r place that tried to charge us five kuai a stick, saying it was New Zealand lamb.
I’ve heard of this, so never use English menus…
Stupid thing is I’ve also worked really hard translating a couple of the menus from favourite local restaurants into English. They’ve very proudly printed them up and bound them in fancy covers. There was never any question raised about the pricing being different, it’s exactly the same as the Chinese menu in both cases. Still, by my own paranoid philosophy, I’d never use them 🙁
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I have encountered several Chinese restaurants in the states having “Chinese People” menus. The food is more Chinese (less American), so much better (if you’re a Chinese food connoisseur). Price? Don’t know the difference…
I’ve heard of this as well, and it makes sense. There’s a lot of stuff on a Chinese menu that would turn white-bread westerners (like myself) off of a restaurant back home.
You just rarely see things like fish heads, chicken feet, pigs’ blood, and duck tongue on Western menus, and it has the potential for hurting your customer base.
However, if the 宫ä¿é¸¡ä¸ and Kung Pao Chicken are different prices, that’s a whole other story.
Know the restaurant’s real price, and just give them that price in exact yuan. And then walk out. Rinse, repeat.
I think this happens in some places and some restaurants in China only. I will forward this to related authorities who probably can make regulations for restaurants.
This is also pretty standard in Chinese restaurants in the United States, and it happens not to be illegal. I don’t know about Indian, Japanese, Korean, or Arab restaurants, but I suspect they do the same thing since I have seen list of prices with numbers next to them.
There’s no racial discrimination involved, and giving discounts or preferred treatment to someone because they can read the local language is not a crime in the United States.
Sounds like things haven’t changed since the 80s when I used to live there. Back then the two menu system was very much in use in several cities.
There is a similar trick that’s used in restaurants: it’s the “big plate”-“small plate” scheme. Here’s the rundown: you order from a menu. You get your food and eat it. Your bill comes arrives and is much higher than expected. When confronted with the price difference the staff/manager says they gave you the “big plate” and that the price indicated on the menu was for the “small plate”. Since you’ve already eaten, they explain, you have to pay the “big plate” price. Negotiations for how much to pay can then ensue depending on how much muscle they have and their mood.
I’ve developed a nearly fool-proof method for paying what I consider to be a fair price for such meals. It’s called the drop and run method. To succeed all members of your party must understand the plan. Make sure during all previous negotiations that no movements toward the door have been made (premature door movement may cause it to be blocked). Also keep previous negotiations civil. You may be mad as hell, but try to act with surprise and mild-anger. If your anger level rises above a certain threshold muscle will be called in. The method is simple. Count out the “fair value” of the meal; make haste to the door; drop money before reaching door. Run. Run. Run. They hardly ever follow.
@SD: That’s milk-out-the-nose hilarious! I’m definitely going to start practicing it.
I may be a little hard-line on this one, but if this kind of thing happens to me, I start by trying to save them a little face and telling them “excuse me, but there’s definitely been a mistake on the bill. Please fix it.” If they don’t take the chance to have everything proceed peacefully, I then insist I won’t pay at all if they won’t correct this simple “mistake”.
If arguments continue, I bluff by asking that they call the police. Of course they never will, and the police likely wouldn’t give two craps, but it scares everyone enough that I can hand them a “fair price” for the meal and go home.
The key is not to yell too loudly or make a scene. If you do make a scene, then reputation is involved, and the manager will have to deny you in order to save face.
A little involved and over-the-top, maybe, but this kind of stuff really gets my goat, even after living here for a while.
On the other hand, when bartering at a shop, I expect to (and happily) pay a reasonable mark-up based on, sadly, my nationality.
I’m not so sure it’s OK to have two different prices in the U.S. See this article: http://card.wordpress.com/2007/02/27/restaurant-charging-extra-for-not-being-chinese/
And I don’t agree with giving people different food choices based on race or nationality as some Chinese restaurants in the States do.
If you are truly proud of what your kitchen has to offer, share it with me. Don’t put it on a separate menu and not tell me about it. You’ll get a lot more customers in the long run.
The places I go to that have interesting and varied menus don’t seem to suffer from a lack of laowai customers.
@Tim I actually used to frequent the restaurant the linked article mentions and they absolutely did not rip off anybody. I’ve ordered off both menus from there and the only difference is that one is a “covered rice plate” menu where you get a scoop of the dish layered on top of a plate of rice-essentially a lunch or individual sized portion, and the other menu is the dinner menu. There’s Chinese characters on the more expensive menu as well so it makes no sense that it’d just be for tourists, it’s just the nicer dinner/family style menu. At almost any Chinese restaurant I think there’s a little bit of a premium for ordering off the family style menu versus the lunch type menu, even at joints where all the menus are Chinese only.
I honestly felt really bad for that restaurant since they had to go hire a lawyer and got such hugely bad publicity over the whole thing when their only mistake was not putting English on the lunch menu. They never hid the other menu from anybody or anything-it was always sitting right up at the front when you walked in for people to place lunch orders and in fact that’s why they got in trouble-someone thought it was a cheaper menu for people who could read Chinese and didn’t realize it’s the menu for the smaller sized portions. I used to work near there so it was one of my favorite places to go and eat and I’d order off both menus all the time, usually the cheaper one for lunch or takeout.