Shenzhen was a memorable experience, not because of anything specifically noteworthy about the city itself, but because of the number of times we were scammed. The first was when the two of us stopped in to get some Beijing roast duck for lunch. For those who don't know what Beijing duck is, it's roast duck served with a soft tortilla like patty, plum sauce, and cucumber or chives. You take the pieces of duck dip it in a little sauce and roll it up in the patty and eat it with your hands. I should preface this by saying, Ethan and I both love Beij
ing duck with an unquenchable passion and can consider ourselves connoisseurs given our extensive experience. So before entering this restaurant I asked the hostess who stood at the front entrance whether or not they had Beijing duck (Beijing kaoya) to which she replied yes, of course. Ethan and I sat down and ordered the duck and waited a few minutes for it to be prepared. First our waiter brought out the pancakes along with the plum sauce and chives. A few minutes later the duck arrived.I started to prepare my first patty by spreading a line of plum sauce and reaching for a piece of duck. I remarked that there was an inordinate amount of duck skin and not much meat. Ethan then looked at the plate of duck and remarked that not only was there a lot of skin, but the plate of duck was just skin and contained no meat at all. The plate of duck appeared to have an ample amount of skin and meat, but in reality, there were only about ten slabs of dry skin propped up underneath by some puffy wafers of some sort. We were paying 48 yuan for ten pieces of duck skin and some chips.
Ethan called over the waitress and we began to argue that this was not what we had ordered. I explained that we wanted Beijing duck. It sort of went like this:
Me: "What is this? We ordered Beijing duck."
Watiress: "This is Shenzhen duck."
Me: "Where is the meat?"
Watiress: "What meat?"
Me: "We ordered Beijing duck, you didn't give us Beijing duck."
Waitress: "They are the same thing."
Me (pointing to the picture in the menu): "This is what we ordered. Beijing duck. You gave us the duck skin, not Beijing duck. We want Beijing duck."
Waitress (calling over manager): "This is Shenzhen duck."
Manager: "This is Shenzhen duck."
Me: "We want the meat. Where is the meat?"
Manager (signals to a waitress who brings over a skinned duck): "You want this?"
Me: "We want the meat, yes."
Manager: "We don't serve the meat. This is Shenzhen duck."
Me: "I asked you if you had Beijing duck and you said you did. This is not Beijing duck."
Manager: "Do you want to eat this?"
Me: "We want the meat."
Manager: "Shenzhen duck doesn't have meat."
Me: "Forget it."
So Ethan and I got up and left. They were fine with letting us leave without paying, even though there was food served to us, and I had eaten a few of the wafers propping up the duck skin. We concluded it had to be a scam (unless anyone has heard/knows anything differently, in which case let me know) because I can't think of anyone who would pay 48 kuai for ten slivers of skin.
The next scam took place when I was at a grocery store looking for some candy that Ethan wanted. Near the check out a woman was tending a small kiosk that sold China Mobile phone recharge cards that you could use to put money on your phone. I purchased a 30 yuan recharge and asked the woman to put it for me. Big mistake. She did it and immediately after I tried to call Ethan but it said I was still out of funds. I asked the woman why it still didn't work. She said I had to wait 30 minutes. So I waited 30 minutes. Then I waited an hour. A day. Three days later I still had no money and the phone recharge code no longer worked.
Before leaving Shenzhen to Macau, Ethan and I checked out the big computer center located near the clothing area downtown. I think Ethan needed some USB memory or something and I was looking for some camera memory also, so we stopped in and looked around. One of the shopkeepers told us they have 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, and 32 GB USB drives. I was flabbergasted. 32 GB on a little tiny pen drive? Impossible. Or maybe not. Clearly not having learned any lesson before I asked the price on the 32 GB, which was 250 yuan. I asked to try it in a computer and the shopkeeper connected it and showed that it indeed had a total space of 32 GB. Something had to be up. It had to. No way this little thing could have 32 GB of space on it. Ethan transferred some files onto the drive and sure enough it now read 31.7 GB.
We bought two for 400 kuai and while I continued to look at camera memory, Ethan went over to another shop. He then shouted to me that they had 64 GB pen drives also! D'oh! At some point Ethan handed his newly purchased 32 GB over to the other shopkeeper and explained to Ethan that it was falsely reporting the 32 GB space using some program to mask the size. The other shopkeeper removed the program and showed us that really it only had 512 MB. By the time Ethan had come back to warn me, I had purchased a 4 GB camera memory which also turned out to be masking it's size. We demanded our money back and fortunately without having to shout, punch, or break things, the shopkeeper returned the money. Ethan says that we should have gone to the other shopkeeper who warned us of the scam in the first place to buy something as a reward for alerting us to the ripoff, but we had to catch the ferry to Macao and were already very late.
Leaving Shenzhen that night was a relief. It was really overwhelming being there. It seemed everyone was out to get our money in some way. I did manage to pick up all six seasons of Oz though, and surprisingly each CD works perfectly. Off to Macao...
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