The one thing that really bothered me was this super elaborate scam from a jewelry shop we went to. [Be aware:
VERY long post ahead]
The experience was pretty odd and felt more like something out of a daytime soap opera than real life. I didn't even
realize that it was going to be a scam because unlike the other factories/stories we visited, the tour guide said that they were not affiliated with them, so therefore we didn't have to buy anything from the jewelry shop. The store was located inside of the Beijing Olympic Stadium, and it looked pretty authentic, so none of us on the trip questioned anything. When we entered, one of the workers ushered us into this little "VIP room" where she was supposed to introduce the usage of pearl cream and pearl powder and all that stuff to us. Instead of doing that, she chatted with us and asked us where we were from (they were aware that we were foreigners). She went out for a second, then came back and said that she couldn't find the expert to explain things to us, so we'd have to wait a while. And so we kept on talking with her, just some small talk.
A little while later, in comes this young man who is speaking very softly, and says that he can take over from this point and give us the presentation because apparently, there were a lot of people there that day and all of the experts were already giving presentations. After she leaves, he stands in front of the room and acts super shy and nervous, mentioning that he really doesn't know anything about pearls/jade/jewelry and that he only does it because his dad wants him to. Feeling bad for him because he looks extremely scared, our tour group consoles him and says that it's fine if he doesn't know anything, and that he can just say whatever he wants to say.
He mentions that he had just come to the store a few days after graduating from university, and that the day before he had tried to talk to a tour group like ours, but they had gotten angry that he was bad at public speaking and kicked him out of the room so they could go look at the jewels. At this point, the tour group is really pitying this guy, and we had let our guard down. It was the last day of the tour and the tour guide had said that we didn't need to buy anything, and that it was okay to just walk around and observe for a bit. The guy ends up saying that his father is the owner of the company, and that his father wants him to eventually take over the store and that he only studied marketing/business in college because his father wanted him to. He claimed that his one real interest was speaking English, and that he liked being called "John".
So, this "John" goes on about how friendly we were to him, and how he wanted to have some contacts overseas, and gave everyone free pearl earrings to gain our trust. Out of nowhere, he says that we can go and see his father's special collection and brings us to a tiny room that has a bunch of jade bracelets, necklaces, and other super-expensive jewelry. Some of the stuff isn't even marked with a price, and he takes out a bunch of super-expensive looking pieces of jewelry out from the display cases and allows us to touch them/hold them, and even take pictures of them (which is usually an extreme no-no because competitors can come in and take pictures of your products) because we're apparently his "good friends" within an hour of meeting him. Around this point, I started to get suspicious, but just brushed it off as him not having many friends, and wanting to have connections with people from outside of China.
After this, he takes us to another room where there are a few of the workers standing behind the counters, and he shows us these jade necklaces with golden zodiac animals. "John" asks us if we like his family's jewelry, and of course we all say yes. He then says that "because you're all my friends, I can give this to you at an extremely discounted price." He then asks the worker standing next to him how much the pendant/necklaces cost, and she replies with "8000RMB" (which is roughly somewhere around 1200-1800 US dollars) Hearing this, "John" goes, "No, no! They're my friends! The price is 1500RMB!" (roughly 200-300USD) The sales attendant acts extremely scared of him and mutters something about never selling things that cheap, and he threatens to fire her. Upon hearing the extreme price slash, a bunch of the tour group (especially the older ladies) swarm the sales attendant and start to buy because they can't resist such an extreme sale. Meanwhile, my family and another family is just kind of standing in the back of the room like "...what the hell, there's no way something like this can happen." I'm pretty they ended up earning around 5000USD from the tour group, since a lot of people bought the jewelry. Also, there were 3 other tour groups in the building at the time, so that adds up to a lot of people fooled and a lot of money wasted on products that were too expensive for their quality.
After getting back on the tour bus, I realized that the store didn't even have a name on the bags of the people who bought the jewelry, and that they didn't seem to have a store name on the wall. Additionally, my mom and I had walked outside to get a bottle of water and upon going back into the building, realized that the store was completely empty (unlike they had previously claimed) and that the only vehicles in the parking lot were tour buses. When we tried to get back inside the building, there were people standing in front of the entrance asking where we were going. Only when we said that we were with the tour group did they let us back inside. So, from this, we deduced that they were probably pulling the "nervous rich kid taking over the business but then gives "friends" a too-good-to-be-true sale" on every tour group that entered the building. To be honest, the people there were
really good actors.

Upon getting wifi, I went on the internet and searched up "beijing tour olympic stadium jewelry scam". I ended up finding a bunch of reviews on tripadvisor, and they all detailed the same thing that had happened to us. One of the people who went through the experience also sent the jewelry they bought to be tested and found out that the jade they bought was only of B or C quality, while the store had claimed that it was all A quality. The first review was from 2011, so it seems like they've been scamming people for a
long time now.
To add to the injury, the tour guide had left us there for three hours and didn't say anything after seeing that so many people had bought jewelry, even after specifically telling us we didn't have to buy anything. My guess is that she probably got a commission of some sort from them, even though she claimed that she had nothing to do with them. Another thing is that we stopped there on the last day, so we were all leaving the next day, and could not return to the store at a later date to complain.
So yeaaaah, it was a pretty surreal experience, and I'm pretty angry that they've probably swindled so many unsuspecting foreigners like that. (lol sorry for typing out such a long story, just had to get it off of my chest

)
TL;DR: Jewelry store scams a bunch of foreigners for years, I learned to do research before signing up for shady tour companies.