Earlier this week I ended up back at Jake’s site after a long hiatus (I guess I haven’t had any digital problems lately that–I shudder to type this–couldn’t be solved by YouTube). There, I found that since my last visit he (1) has started learning Mandarin Chinese and (2) is in Beijing this very week reporting from the ‘DEMO China’ conference.

To quote Jake:

Like the DEMO conference here in the United States, DEMO China represents a showcase of some of exciting new companies. This is the first DEMO ever held outside the U.S. and I’m documenting all the companies presenting over the course of the three-day event.

And to quote Jake’s quote of the DEMO China site:

DEMO China showcases a market with explosive growth potential – the People’s Republic of China. With growing support from VCs, numerous successful tech companies in China are now publicly traded on the NASDAQ, including SINA, SOHU, NETEASE and BIDU. And there’s much more growth ahead. New technology companies are launched everyday in this booming market. DEMO China will screen the entire country for the Annual Top 70 companies.

The conference ran September 6-8, and Jake has posted just a handful of entries in his DEMO China blog so far, but I rather suspect he’ll be adding more as time allows.

In my favorite post, “Mvox Duo Wearable Voice-Dialing Communicator,” Jake reports on a technology that its creator, Silicon Valley’s MVox Technologies, apparently doesn’t want you to know about yet if you live in the United States. Says Jake:

In a rather dramatic introduction, Mvox walked through a demonstration promising to throw out all your existing wired communication devices and replace it with a hands-free voice activated solution for dialing, talking, and communicating (in the demo they called Yao Ming). The Mvox DUO is both a Bluetooth headset and hands-free car kit with speaker phone. The speaker phone capability allows it to double as a portable conference room phone and it integrates with VoIP over Bluetooth, assuming your computer is Bluetooth equipped….

[A]fter the company found out I was American, they wouldn’t let me take better shots because they haven’t announced the device in the U.S. just yet. Someday, companies need to remember that the Internet has no borders. (emphasis mine)

A couple other posts you China-looking techies and marketers and wireless experts might like (Hi, Karl!) include:

• Saybot English Language Learning Software

• MobiWallet RFID Payment System from Jton Systems

And since I’m trying harder to follow the “Each Post Must Say Something Unique, Not Just Copy, Paste and Link” rule of blogging:

The Mvox DUO doesn’t look like a Star Trek communicator so much as it does one of those theft-prevention devices clamped to clothing in certain mid-scale department stores:

Photo by Jake Ludington

The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics is scheduled for August 8th, 2008.

42 years apart, I’ve just realized. 42. To the day.

Hmm, I’m going to keep thinking about this one for awhile before drawing any hard and fast conclusions.

42, of course, is the number posited in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy “from which all meaning (the meaning of life, the universe, and everything) could be derived.” (SearchSMB.com).

Roddy writes:

A friend of mine just got caught out by this while visiting Beijing, and I figured I’d write this up in the hope that it might save some others some hassle . . .

I’m sure these and variations are in operation in other cities in China and worldwide, and a general warning to be on your guard when you’re in tourist areas is always warranted, but here’s some details.

The Beijing Teahouse Scam
You are happily wandering around somewhere like Wangfujing or Tiananmen and a friendly English student starts chatting to you. He or she speaks very good English, is friendly and shows you around, maybe helps you buy a few gifts, and subsequently suggests you go for a cup of tea at a nice teahouse he / she knows. The teahouse will be very nice, you will have some very nice tea, but you will feel slightly disturbed by the fact that they served tea without letting you see a menu, or that the menu has no prices on. You will assume this is how you do things in China.

When the bill comes it will be ridiculous. My mate got presented with one that was approaching a four-figure RMB sum, for a pot of tea. Even if there is a tea house in Beijing legitimately serving tea at that price, it sure as hell doesn’t pour without asking what you want first.

What happens now varies – some scream and shout, some yell for the police, some pay up meekly, even if it requires the use of foreign currency or a credit card because they haven’t got enough RMB on them.

Variations:
1) Art galleries. ‘Art students’ strike up a conversation and invite you to their gallery. You’ll see at best second rate art at top-rate prices, and will be lucky to avoid a high-pressure sales pitch. Spend your time at a real gallery. Real galleries, for reference, do not send English students out onto the streets pretending to be art students.
2) Bars. Seems to be more common in Shanghai, and uses pretty girls in too much make-up rather than innocent looking ‘English students’ in tracksuits. This is clearly because Shanghai attracts a lower-class of tourist, but that’s beside the point.

In any case, you’ll be in danger of paying a lot more for something than you should do, and at the very least you’re going to waste your time.

How to avoid it: Sad to say, if you are in an area where there are a lot of tourists in China, then 99% of people who approach you want something, whether they are postcard sellers, tour touts, Mao watch merchants, or scam artists as described above. Do not go anywhere which will involve spending money – be it a teahouse, a gift shop, an art gallery or a restaurant – with these people. If you are convinced that someone who approached you while you were standing on a street corner with your upside-down map and a copy of the Lonely Planet is genuine, fine – but go to a place of your choosing, and laugh in the face of anyone who gives you something you didn’t order, or presents you a price-free menu.

You can read the follow-up discussion and more information about these types of traveler scams in China at Chinese-Forums.com. Our thanks to Roddy for the warning and permission to share it via The Chinese Outpost.

It’s no secret that “foreigners” often get “overcharged” when souvenier-shopping in China, but how to know how much one is getting overcharged?

Well, thanks to my (native Chinese) Wife’s astute undercover reporting recent shopping spree in Beijing, I have some some anecdotes and numbers to report.

The first small snippet: while bargaining with one seller for an even lower price on an item, the seller used the following statement as part of her bargaining technique: “You apparently don’t trust me. I’m offering you a great price already. Why should I go lower when I could sell this same thing to the next foreigner who comes in here for ten times what I’m asking from you.”

Whoa. We might guess that “ten times” could be an exaggeration, part of her haggling technique, but still. Whoa.

But then during another leg of this shopping spree, my Wife and her Younger Sister visited what we’ll call a “Jade Emporium.” It includes a sales showroom, an artisan workshop, and a “training center” to train other Chinese in the art of jade carving. I have names and addresses, but they’re really not important to this story, since what I’m about to describe isn’t an isolated phenomenon. It’s just the best of several examples I have….

Here, as told to me by my Wife, is her experience at this “Emporium.”

This Jade Emporium is included as a stop on a number of tour group itineraries. Visitors get off their buses, check out the showroom, maybe see a demonstration of some sort if they’re lucky, and–the whole point of being taken there in the first place–buy lots of jade stuff (if the tour operators are lucky, that is, since they get a commission on all purchases).

My Wife and her Younger Sister were asked by one of the shop girls where they were from, and they replied “Fujian Province,” and the girl said, “Oh, our general manager is from Fujian Province. Let me go get him…”.

A bit later, said general manager arrived, dressed in his best spiffies, and greeted his fellow Fujianese in a way that didn’t exactly make them feel he was their long lost cousin–too much stereotypical “used car salesman” stuff.

Anyway, to the point–and if you plan on shopping in Beijing (or anywhere in China) around the 2008 Olympics, pay attention. This post’s for you–they got around to talking prices with this fellow on a piece that had a price tag for 6000 RMB attached to it. My wife said she was interested in the piece, but 6000 RMB seemed high.

And again, if you think you might be inclinced to pay sticker price on some nice looking thing just because “You like it,” or because “Well, it’s worth that to me,” then perk up!

He just gave a little smile, picked up the piece, and whispered to them, “Follow me.”

He took them away to an area where the rest of the tour group–other travelers from all over China–couldn’t hear them talk, and told them something like this:

“Look, of course 6000 RMB is too high for this, that’s just fishing for big dumb fish with a small worm. We get a lot of tourists here from Japan and Korea, and we’ll let them haggle the price down 50% on this sort of piece, to 3000 RMB. They think they’re getting a great half-price deal, but even that is ‘killing them down to the last drop of blood’. How much do you think this piece costs me? No idea? Would you pay 2000RMB for it? Would you feel that’s a good deal? Look, because we’re from the same province, I’m going to level with you. You can take it at just over my cost. For 350 RMB, it’s yours. But I want you to do three things for me: First, live a good life. Second, don’t hesitate to share this jade piece with others [Note: He had also explained the "curative powers of jade" to them.]; and third, tell anyone back in Fujian Province that if they’re looking to learn the jade craft to come up here. We can give them the training they need.”

He also explained that this sort of pricing–for example, putting a sticker price equal to $750 US for a piece that cost the seller less than $40.00–is going to be the norm for sellers around Beijing during the 2008 Olympic period, and many sellers are already warming up with tour groups, which are typically more “captive” buyers.

Phenomenal.

And me, I feel torn between (1) trying to warn tourists going to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics and (2) opening a shop in Beijing to sell Chinese arts and crafts to tourists coming to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.