A Zhuhai tour guide surnamed Wu, who abused and insulted a group of mainland tourists, has been exposed on video. Wu called the members of her group "poor wretches" and "liars" over their failure to buy cigarettes from her.

She threatened to abandon the tourists in a desolate location. One of the tourists had a video camera rolling through part of the tirade.

"You all are mooching off me for eating and drinking! I paid your fare, I paid your meals! No way you can do this here!" yelled the tour guide in the video.

A group of 12 tourists from Nanjing joined a five-day tour to Hong Kong and Macao. Last Friday, the group arrived in Zhuhai back on the mainland.

The tour guide Wu had persuaded the tourists to change their original plan to visit a local shopping mall and go to a jewelry shop instead.

The tourists made no purchases. "We watched them introducing jewelry, like they were acting. The point is, they (the jewelries) just looked too fake," wrote one of the tourists in a post to an online forum. The post soon became a hot topic among net users.

Wu also tried to promote Grand Lisboa cigarettes, claiming the brand contained a significant amount of Cordyceps Sinensis, which is said to have a refreshing effect and can improve one's health. She also noted that gamblers in Macao smoke the same cigarettes to stay alert. The cigarettes were being sold at 300 yuan per carton.

When the tourists rejected her offer, Wu immediately got angry and stated she must sell the cigarettes since it was the task given to her by the agency. She offered another option that every tourist could buy one pack, but that they must buy.

"(She) threatened us and said, if we didn't buy, she would drop us in some desolate place and let us go to the airport by ourselves," wrote the tourist in the post.

The incident followed right on the heels of another embarrassing incident, in which a Hong Kong tour guide was caught on video abusing a group of visitors from the Chinese mainland for their parsimony during a stop at a jewelry shop early this month. The incident prompted mainland officials to issue a travel advisory warning citizens about Hong Kong's pushy tour guides.

"We heard some things...at first we were quite alert. But after the trip, we found Hong Kong's tour guides have much higher professional ethics than the mainland ones. We had a great time in Hong Kong and Macao," said one of the tourists surnamed Chen.

China Daily

(HK Edition 07/27/2010 page1)