BEFORE THE EVENT
- CRI Built a trip for us to visit Shaanxi.
- The trip was supposed to be a chance for them to introduce the culture, events and landscapes of the area to us for us to make videos that will help to show their area to the world.
- HOW IT SHOULD WORK: WE GET CONTENT, THEY GET EXPOSURE AND PROMOTION.
- WE HAVE DONE TRIPS LIKE THIS ON MANY OCCASIONS AND IT IS EQUALLY APPRECIATED.
- Events are created beforehand and a schedule details what we will do on the trip for our approval. We don’t simply go blindly letting them choose what to do for us.
- Among the visits to Terra-cotta Warriors, and some informative locations introducing us to some local cultural activities and villages, the location most important and looked forward too was the visit to Huashan.
- Huashan was listed on the original schedule by the organizers that was sent to us before we choose to do the event. Many of us, me included, choose to go on the trip SPECIFICALLY because we wanted to visit and climb the mountain. Having the “approval” of the CRI government agency gave us the impression that it was good to go.
DISCLAIMER
Before I talk about the event, I want to thank everyone that went and helped us on the next few days. We had a GREAT time due to the efforts of the people on the tour DISPITE the tour itself. Also, we appreciate the people who tried to make some things happen at Hua Shan. It’s not their fault. It was the system that was faulty in this case.
I also want to make sure that it is clear that:
- We are of course calling this out because we are NOT Pro China shills. If you want us to NOT bash “china” and simply glaze over events like this then you are silently agreeing with all the china hating community by complicitly confirming that there is not an ability to call out the system and wrongs that happen from time to time in the country. In order to be balanced you have to call out the good and the bad.
AT THE EVENT
- It became apparent very quickly that the event was not going to be about us and our content, but instead was going to be about them and their content.
- Long days, technical and less than impressive tours and disregard for our content making was evident.
- You can’t film here.
- Say what we ask you to say.
- Breakneck schedule leaving NO time to even edit or rest at the end of the day.
- Ending late and leaving early.
- Speak about things you have not seen yet. (my speech)
- We are finished with OUR filming…. Let’s go NOW even though you are not.
- Constantly ignoring and interrupting our filming.
- Visiting locations purely for their benefit with very little or no interesting value for youtube.
- During the trip, a decision was made out of our control, to take the visit to Huashan out an reduce the trip by 1 day. The excuse given was lack of time and budget.
- The trip instead consolidated events and added more “less than vlog worthy” visits.
AFTER THE EVENT
- In order to climb Huashan, we were told we would have to do it ourselves.
- We were given instructions by CRI on how to reach the mountain and told advice about it. This gave us confidence in the ability to go and dissuaded us from checking ourselves. This is a government agency who had the mountain on the original schedule, “why would we need to verify if they had it on the original schedule???!”
- Throughtout the week we never needed health codes or special circumstances
- 5 of us decided that in spite of the crazy trip, we would like to all go to the trip by ourselves (Kirk and Eric returned home)
- Huashan is 120KM from Xi’an and required a 20 USD train ticket per person.
- The mountain is cold on the summit, and we also had to buy hats and gloves at the base of the mountain.
- In order to climb Huashan (which I remind you was ON THE ORIGINAL SCHEDULE), we all had to extend our trip by 1 extra day.
- Each of us paid 400 RMB/room to add a day at the hotel they arranged for us.
- CRI would not cover the expenses incurred to book the extra day, buy supplies, transportation, visit and climb the mountain.
- AT NO TIME DID THE CRI TEAM INFORM US THAT FOREIGNERS WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO CLIMB HUASHAN. IN FACT, THEY ENCOURAGED US THE ENTIRE TIME BY PROVIDING US WITH ADVICE AND SOME PREPLANNING.
- THIS WAS NOT SIMPLY THE EMPLOYEES AT CRI, ALL LEVELS OF THE TEAM WERE INVOLVED IN THIS ASSISTANCE. THESE ARE PEOPLE THAT SHOULD BE FAMILIAR WITH TOURISM IN SHAANXI PROVINCE AND HUASHAN IS ONE OF THE MOST NOTABLE LOCATIONS IN THE ENTIRE PROVINCE.
- We woke up at 5 am to get the first fast train to the mountain, hoping to put a positive end on a less than perfect trip.
- We arrived at the mountain and heard taxi drivers telling us “no foreigners allowed”… but we figured it was probably a taxi con tactic.
- Upon arrival, we learned of the policy.
- Confusion insued.
- We all did our best to try to find a resolution, and we contact CRI for advice, with some understanding that they must have had some exception for us to go, as it was ON THE ORIGINAL SCHEDULE AND THEY ARE FUCKING SHAANXI ORGANIZERS.
- Officials at the location did their best to try to make things work.
- After explaining our cooperation with CRI to the mountain ticket staff, We were even given the chance to possibly get special approval by the hospital. (this was not assisted by CRI, this was our efforts)
- What ensued was a series of failed attempts, transportation all over town as hours ticked by and the mountain became less and less of a reality.
- In the end, the mountain trip failed, but we made the best out of a bad situation and had a good time despite…. As we had for the whole trip until then.
- We complained to CRI, who said they did not know about the regulation, and refused to compensate us for the loss, claiming that the fee they incurred to extend out tickets one day was all that they would/could cover.
CONCLUSION
- You are going to watch videos from this visit on each of our channels in the future. You may wonder why we are happy and appreciative. This is because in spite of the event, we are all open minded and understand that there are positive aspects to find in any situation. Serendipitous events presented constantly (despite their efforts too the contrary) and we took advantage to tell our stories in the most interesting way possible. Also, we were constantly thinking the ship would turn at any moment and the trip would evolve into something more balanced, but it never did. On top of that, we are all hella-cool optimistic guys and gals.
- The fact that we are so frustrated about this one event should be telling. This is the exception to the rule and not the rule.
- Promotional trips are about balance. It’s understood that there will be some things that will be performative, and we are ok with that. If it’s a good trip, then we all win and its appreciated.
- The regulation to keep us off the mountain is unfair and bias towards foreigners.
- But the regulation to keep non secondary ID holders off the mountain was made as part of china’s massive effort to control the pandemic and was not updated as it should be.
- Besides this point CRI had to tell us about this to preempt this whole mess in the first place.
- Promotional trips like this happen all over the world. Youtubers, Actors, Celebrities and notable individuals get invited to take part in promotional activities all over the world. It is not only a CHINA phenomenon.
- This is not about CHINA=BAD. This is about GIG=BAD.
Again, we thank everyone that helped us along this way, and the tour staff who was funny, but adhering to rules that were antithetical to us doing what we do best, which is telling kick ass stories.
Hopefully this is a lesson to future tour operators on how to find balance and make it a win win.
