A scam experienced by a visitor to Beijing:

Went to Beijing Xiang Shan this week, took the cable car to the top, and then took the horses down to the bottom. At least in theory ;p I'd advise people not to do this, or at least be pretty careful if you do. I like to think I might not have been fooled had the trip not been suggested in the Rough Guide, but you never know. Here's how the scam worked (for us) in lurid detail.

At the top of the main peak (Incense Burner Peak) touts approach you offering their services. We were offered 40 kuai each (for two people) to take horses down the hill. Our tout lowered the price to 30 each without much of a fight, and confirmed we would be "two minutes" from the entrance to the cable car at the end of our trip. She then led us away from the peak to the horses. This was a rough path, which actually involved climbing over a broken bit of wall, which I now know was leading out of the park. There we were passed over to two chinese gents (my one said he was a migrant worker from Hebei), who put us on a couple of horses and led them down the slope.

About 50m down our guide told me (in Chinese) that actually we had a choice of two routes. One cheap, steep, and dangerous, one flat and smooth. I said we wanted the cheap one, and he claimed that for safety we had to lean forward and stay low. Obviously (looking back) this was actually just to scare us into agreeing to take the expensive road. He claimed it was expensive because of the extra time taken. In reality, the steep path he suggested was not actually a path. He asked for 150 for the two of us. I reluctantly bargained to 100.

After a pleasant enough 10 minute trot down a good road, we arrived at a shabby looking grey gate. It didn't feel like we were anywhere near far enough down, but our friendly guides (they were friendly throughout, never aggressive, which made them more convincing) claimed that we had arrived at the bottom, and had five minutes to go walking. They refused to take us any further ("horses not allowed through the gate" they claimed), and when I went to look and couldn't see anything that looked like where we were meant to be, they claimed it was all just out of sight around the corner. The cheeky buggers even claimed we were at the temple at the bottom of the hill. I argued them down to 70Y total, but didn't feel particularly safe doing it, as we were at this point clearly in the middle of nowhere.

It took us about 40 minutes to walk the rest of the way to the bottom. On the way we passed more horses ("horses not allowed"? grr!), and a group of three people playing cards next to their car. They asked 50Y to give us a 5 minute ride to the bottom of the hill, I presume they were friends of the horse scammers. They were certainly not surprised when I was rude to them, and did not hesitate to return the favour. A little further down we passed some significantly more friendly villagers, who said many people were fooled that way. When we arrived we were, needless to say, outside the gate to Xiang Shan park, with a fairly bitter taste in our mouths.

[While I'm on the subject of blatant lying, I was foolish enough to spend an afternoon at Badaling Great Wall. We went to Deshengmen to get the 919 bus there, where touts for another bus claim the 919 takes 3 hours (closer to 1h40), and had the cheek to claim that the 919 bus didn't go to Badaling while standing next to its door. The price of their bus is not much more (80 kuai including 45 kuai entrance ticket, compared to 7 or 12 for the public bus (depending on whether you get a fast or slow service) ), but misinformation's not the kind of service I like to pay extra for.]

Any constructive comments on this experience or similar experiences from other people? My time in China before now has been free of negative experiences like this, so it was a bit of a shock for me. It's not like it's a lot of money, but the whole experience was fairly unpleasant.