The not-so-magic bus ... Tourist traps and the Chinese tour industry.

Ugh, these past few days have been really aggravating. Basically I've come to learn that traveling with your parents requires a lot of compromises.

I'm normally a very independent traveler. I've backpacked through Europe by myself, did a solo trip to Japan and visited several places throughout the States on my own. I like the independence if traveling alone. On those trips I could see what I wanted when I wanted without compromising for anybody.

My mom is incredibly neurotic so she would never trust me to arrange travel for the entire family. To save everybody headaches and to avoid my mother's inevitable constant nagging I opted to allow her to sign us up for a package tour via a local Chinatown travel agency for the first ten days of our trip. I'm beginning to regret that decision.

In the best of times I dislike package tours because I can't stand how overly-structured they are. I dislike being herded around like cattle and being so restricted in terms of what is on the itinerary and the kind of time constraints associated with it. I feel "handled" and know I'm only seeing the touristy places leaving no room for authenticity in the experience. Package tours are usually the realm of elderly travelers who don't particularly care where they go or what they see. These people like the convenience of not having to think about anything. These tours are generally not aimed at young, independent-minded culture fiends like myself.

In addition to all the regular disadvantages associated with package tours, in China tours are also centrally coordinated. Very few independent tour operators exist and foreign travel agents are forced to deal with these approved tour operators.

The tour we have the misfortune to currently find ourselves on is little more than a scam to bilk money out of Westerners at a string of asinine tourist traps. Although many of the popular and famous sites are on the itinerary, interspersed are a ridicous number of "shopping stops" where bus tours are herded into these complexes, given these demonstrations (think Vince with Sham-Wow) and then hit up to buy a variety of ridiculously overpriced wares. Everything from Chinese medicine to pearls to cloisonné vases to jade to painted crystal spheres to teapots and more are shoved down these Western tourists' unsuspecting throats.

The less-savvy among them (like my mom) are happily and naïvely suckered into being hosed by these scams. My brother and I argued with my mom for close to an hour in vain before she parted with $300 USD in some snake oil "Chinese medicine" after being examined by this quack Chinese doctor and enduring a high pressure sales pitch. At another tour stop at a "Pearl factory" we were being hawked everything from phoney baloney pearl cosmetic cream to cheap pearl jewelery. My brother found a $70 USD bracelet identical to one he paid $10 USD for at a market in San Francisco.

The tourist trap stops wouldn't annoy me so much if it weren't for the fact that they're so frequent and long. If the actual sites of interest were a TV program and the tourist traps were commercials this stupid tour would be at least 40 minutes of commercials for 20 minutes of actual programming content.

When we get off the tour bus and go into these places we're given cards with numbers so when we buy stuff they know which tour operator to give the kickback to. The tours also get a set amount for every hapless sap they herd into these traps. It's all an elaborate scam and hence operates most of China's nacent tour industry.

Compounding my frustration is the fact that on this particular tour the guides do not speak English. This fact wouldn't be a huge deal if they could at least provide an accurate itinerary I could follow. I hate being kept in the dark and led around blindly. Yet whenever I press the guides for this information they are sheepishly stand-offish to provide it. It seems their state's penchant for controling information has trickled down to them which would also explain why they are surprised and don't seem to know how to handle "dissenters" like me who keep questioning their motives and drilling for more information.

Suffice it to say that these package tours are horribly run. They are also a mess logistically; they don't prebuy admission tickets so we're left waiting in line regardless, their communication of itineraries is horrible, they also have no contingencies in place if members of the group are late or lost. My brother who has worked extensively in the tour industry back home has been constantly pointing out shortcomings in their operations and consequently I'm not impressed.

While it's true we did buy the tour for rock bottom prices it is not the bargain it appeared to be. Instead of seeing the sites and experiencing the China I wanted to see I'm stuck sitting in the corner of a room full of overpriced teapots annoyed and tapping out this note on my iPhone waiting for the tour operators to herd us to the trough for lunch and then likely to the next textile factory or jade shop or whatever.

Sure, the tour was dirt cheap but when it just turns out to be a waste of time you really have to question its actual value.

Luckily we only have to slug it out for another couple days before we reach Shanghai and the end of the package tour portion of the trip.

Obviously I would never have signed up for this tour if not for the fact that I have my parents in tow. There are several younger families with kids here who seem to be able to enjoy it more and maybe I wouldn't have been so annoyed and critical of the experience had my parents brought me as a child or young teen. Whether this experience was worth bearing through to spend time with my parents is questionable. It has defintely been a learning experience and I've learned or re-affirmed a lot of things about myself and my relationship with my parents.

Regardless, I will definitely never sign up for one of these immense wastes-of-time again and I would caution everybody who might be considering it as a quick, easy, cheap option to see China. You'd only be seeing the best of China's ugly budding capitalist bent. Package tours of China are little more than thinly-veiled scams. Caveat Emptor.

I can't wait 'til we get to Shanghai.

Wangfujing Daijie Street Market

No Some Reservations . . .

Wangfujing dajie is a busy night life district in Beijing with a food market. There are several "interesting" items on offer, among them scorpions.

Now, maybe I watch a little too much television ... the Market was featured on last season's Amazing Race and I'm a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain's travel log/food show No Reservations and his willingness to try new and "exotic" foods.

So when I looked at the skewer of scorpions at one of the stands, I decided to have a taste.

My brother was there to document the experience:

China: My Voyage to the Middle Kingdom

So as some of you may already know I am about to embark on a one-month trip to China and Hong Kong with my parents and brother.

Our itinerary for the month takes us to Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Macau, and Hong Kong among other smaller places along the way.

Since my parents are both originally from China and I grew up as a "Chinese"-Canadian I suppose China has always occupied a sort of deferential yet mysterious place in my psyche although interestingly enough, I've never been there. My parents ran a business and never had much time for traveling when I was a child. As a teen and young adult I was more interested in exploring Europe and the opportunity to visit China never arose.

I now regret not having had the opportunity to visit sooner. Being "Chinese" yet never having visited the country or meeting my family there is slightly paradoxical. In recent years China has opened up a lot to Western tourism especially with last year's Olympics in Beijing and next year's Expo in Shanghai. I also have many world-beating friends who have visited and who are always surprised to hear I haven't yet been. It's gotten to the point where I'm actually really embarrassed to admit that I've never been.

Traveling with my family will be a bit of a challenge, or at least a new experience. Until now our family vacations consisted of weekend trips to Toronto, day trips to Montreal.

This trip will be the first time we'll be taking a substantial family vacation. It's been quite a few years in the planning. My grandmother (who helped raise my brother and I when we were children then subsequently returned to China) has been asking us to visit for years. My brother and I have also been asking our parents to take the trip with us for years. It's only been recently that the stars have aligned for a trip like this to take place, my parents have started to scale down their business operations and are now comfortable with taking a month away, my brother and I are in jobs where we have enough vacation to do a trip of this length.

Unfortunately, we will be visiting China during the hottest time of year. My brother is a teacher which means he has very little flexibility as to when he can take time off and summer was pretty much our only option. With temperatures in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong forecast to reach into the low 40s Celcius with humidity the trip will be a hot, sweaty endeavour.

Traveling with the family will also mean giving up some of the freedom I'm used to. I'm normally a very independent traveler having backpacked through Europe, visited Japan and several places in the States by myself. I like the flexibility of solo travel and the fact that I'm able to do what I want when I want without making any concessions to other people's wants or needs.

The first part of our trip, Beijing through Shanghai will consist of a ten-day package tour. I normally despise package tours for several reasons; being herded around in big groups like cattle, not having any flexibility to what you see or when you see it, being corralled from one overpriced gift shop to the next, only seeing the sanitized touristy parts of places and never being able to interact with locals or have any authentic experiences is not my style of traveling. However, seeing as I'll have my parents in tow, I was willing to make the concession of going on a package tour because my neurotic Chinese mother would never trust me to arrange the trip logistics on my own and would be constantly badgering me and second-guessing me the entire time. What I give up in independence in accepting the package tour I'm sure to get back in sanity. And as my brother told me, I'll likely have plenty of other opportunities in my lifetime to return to China to visit the places I want to see the way I want to see them.

While traveling with my parents will undoubtedly present challenges; my brother and I don't live at home anymore and we're not used to constantly having to deal with my mother's neurotic tendencies anymore. I'm sure there'll be times of frustration and times where we all get on each others' nerves as we really haven't spent significant time together as a family-unit for years now. I am, however, looking forward to sharing this experience with my brother and my parents (while they're still physically fit enough to undertake such a lengthy trip). The experience is a little bittersweet as this is our first trip of this length as a family but it may also be the last time we get to do something like this. I know I'm going to make my best effort to taking the little annoyances in stride and focusing on maximizing the experience at hand.

The first little annoyance . . . the 16-hour flight from Chicago to Beijing. Wish me luck!

What's your background?

I was out at a bar last night and making small talk with this stranger when he hit me with the question, "So what's your background?"

My chest tightened and my stomach turned a little bit. "Ugh!" I thought, "really?" I really despise being asked that question. If I feel like being a jerk at the time I usually fuck with them a bit by replying, "Canadian," like, "What do you mean?" which forces the inquirer into the uncomfortable position of asking,

"No, I mean, where are you from originally?"

"Oh, I was born here."

"No, but, where does your family come from?"

. . .

While to most people it may seem like a relatively innocuous inquiry, to a visible minority, "What's your background" is a very loaded question.

If it's followed by a statement like "Wow, we don't see many of 'you people' around here" it obviously smacks of racism but even when it isn't so overt there's still a subtle underpinning of racism that can't be ignored. While it's not the pitchfork-wielding lynch mob racism of past generations it's still an indication that the "perpetual foreigner" image for ethnic minorities is still alive and well.

I was born and raised in Canada and consider myself as Canadian as maple syrup and bitching about the weather, it really irks me to no end that people can still view me as an outsider who somehow doesn't quite belong. It's a subtle, seemingly benign undercurrent of racism yet it's unsettling because I know that if push comes to shove it would manifest itself in ugly ways.

I guess it's a pet peeve of mine. Even without the racist undertone I always thought it was just kind of rude and socially unacceptable, like walking up to a guy in a wheel chair and asking point blank, "So what? Did you lose your legs in some sort of car accident or were you born that way?" and nobody ever walks up to a white person and asks them out of the blue, "So what are you? Irish? French? Lithuanian? Khazakistani? Like, where are you from?"

While I'd like to dismiss this incident as the social faux-pas of a backwoods rube, part of me is still offended because I've struggled all my life to find acceptance in this society and with one comment I'm reminded that acceptance isn't a given and that I still have to struggle with these issues. It's frustrating.