Trip to the People’s Republic of China
The Guides
Tall, dark (ethnic Chinese), handsome, charming, and ready and able to squawk like a peacock—that’s my description of Robin Tau, our tour leader. The loud peacock shriek was his invention to warn the tour group that free time was over and to regroup. The cry worked very well in crowd conditions. Not only could we identify that our particular group was being summoned, but we could use the sound as a homing device. Very soon, we were responding like Pavlov’s dogs. Seemingly, no other guide had adopted a similar technique. Otherwise, we might have heard a variety of jungle cries at the public sites. A fellow guide did try shrieking after seeing the effectiveness of Robin’s method. However, he was too self-conscious to pull it off and all we heard was a pitiful squeak.
Robin stuck with us through the entire trip, from Los Angeles and back again. Even on our free day in Beijing, he donated part of his day off to lead a small group to the Silk Market. Most of the time, Robin wore a black pinstripe suit jacket, black slacks and a business shirt. On that particular occasion, however, he showed up looking like an extra from Star Trek. He was wearing the requisite uniform of tight chartreuse pullover, black shoes and slacks, and a black camera bag with a wide strap slung over one shoulder that could have been standard issue for the exploration crew down to the planet surface.
Robin gave us dire warnings about pickpockets in an effort to keep the tour group together when walking on the streets. He instructed us to keep our fanny packs and backpacks in front of us, and he did not want us stopping for street peddlers. In one of his stories, a gypsy threw her baby (really a doll) at the tourists; in another story, a woman breast-fed her baby. In both instances, while the tourists were distracted, they lost their valuables. These scare tactics lost their effect because the street vendors had the best deals.
But one time, I had a scare. I had stopped to buy a book. When I looked up, I found myself cut off from the tour group by a moat and surrounded by a mob of vendors. When I tried running, the mob moved with me. I actually yelled out, "Help me!" Robin scrambled quickly to my rescue, pulling me out of the crowd and yelling something in Chinese. Pat said she was only sorry that she had not captured the National Geographic moment on video.
In addition to the tour leader supplied by Ritz tours, we had a local guide in each city. Local guides are required to undergo an extensive training program mandated by the Chinese government. They all wear badges to indicate their license status.
In Beijing, we were assigned a cute young woman, who giggled a lot. She held the red Ritz flag high over her head during long walks between narratives. I felt sorry for her arm at the end of the day. I thought that she could have used a leather pouch, like a flag bearer in a parade. The Xi’an guide was a young man with, unfortunately, a soft voice. He was ignored much of the time. In Shanghai, our guide was a mature woman, who enunciated each word so carefully that you could read her lips. I found the clarity a great relief. Instead of holding a flag, she wore a bright orange jacket and carried an orange parasol.
All of the local guides made ample use of their cells phones. They often interrupted their speeches at the front of the bus to take a call. Some calls may have been from the factories, because our bus was running late. The guides would also call the bus driver to make a pickup at a different spot, or the restaurant to make alternate plans.
