You are right, no hay remedio. But if this thread can keep someone else out of trouble, or help them negotiate better conditions, I just think it should be out there.

Plus, ranting can be very satisfying ;-)

Can't you find some other type of employment or a legitimate tour company that provide a visa? I don't know if there is a big market for Spanish tourist.

Doesn't matter any more, I am in Cambodia working as a volunteer in an NGO for a few months, while looking for a new job for later, not in China, hopefully on board a ship.

Which is why I needed a reference letter to justify my experience of the past five years...

Lorena
Thank you for sharing. Hopefully, you've learned to stand up for yourself and don't be a doormat for anyone, regardless of the job. They were NOT doing you a favor, you were doing THEM a favor - for five years.

Management should NEVER yell at employees - it's abusive and bullying behavior (unless you did something incredibly stupid and irresponsible the SECOND time and even then...it's just not professional and not acceptable).

Good luck with your new job - hope you meet a higher class of professionals than the yoyo's you worked with here.

As for tips - travel agencies should establish a guideline for tips - usually 15% is the standard, 20% for great services, less for whatever reason.

Back in 1995, we usually tipped our tour guides MORE than USD 100 for 2 week trips - (that's just us), which was actually a phenomenal tip back in those days - that did NOT include whatever crumbs the rest of the tour group would tip, and we ALWAYS tipped privately.

If you'd like to return to China to work legally, drop me a PM along with your short and long-term career goals. Your multi-lingual language abilities (to include Spanish) may be very useful in the future.

Employer ethics in china are very low; Employers expect foreign quality service but they pay chinese slave labor wages.

They don't understand and never will.

points to note. chinese are bad tippers, generally, if they do tip well it can be conspicous, but even if not will be new rich middle class. until recent tipping in china was illegal and the tipping culture hasn't really developed yet. budget coach packages especially stingy. these are people looking to pay the least, and they in turn are being cheated sby the tour company at every corner, and you are the face of the company. as for discarding people, no surprises in china, unless you are family or you are of some other value, you are just a thing to be used. cold hard reality here.

@michael2015 Thank you very much, that very nice of you to say. I will send you a PM.

@Mike4g_air Not quite the problem I had, in my case in particular, the Chinese partner treated me in a professional and respectful manner, he was actually rather nice; it was the Spanish woman who behaved like a lunatic.

@Dazzer Actually... that's not entirely fair. As far as I know, Chinese people are actually OK tippers, at least for drivers and guides. That being said, I didn't work with Chinese people, so I can't talk from personal experience. The people I worked with were mostly from Spain, but also Latin America, and many of them were truly nice people, and they were very happy with me, but they just didn't have a clue because no one told them that they should tip, and the tip was not included in the price of their trip.

I come from European country where tipping is not expected, and as was already pointed, in China it was illegal until recently.

Recently in a restaurant a waiter approached us after the meal, and asked if we could evaluate her by some sort of WeChat app and give a tip with the app as well.

My Chinese wife was quite confused of the situation, and it was obvious we would not voluntarily visit that restaurant again.

Personally I feel that unless the service is _exceptionally_ good (like returning a forgotten phone or purse), or the specific country has a culture where waiters get big part of their income through through tips, I never tip.

Thank you for your comment JanJal, but tipping is not the topic of this thread. I would rather avoid this thread went off on a different subject.

I understand, but the topic of the thread and even the content of your original post ("if you want it as a summer job, it should be fine") heavily relies and supports the idea that working on tourist visa is kind of OK.

Which it isn't, and it especially hurts those who want to live or work in China legally like I trust most regulars in this site do.

There are reasons why the regulations have become tougher in recent years, but nobody of course wants to be part of that reason personally.