By Bill Siggins

There are many creative cons in China, and they've become widespread enough to merit a new noun in the Chinese lexicon. When you're the victim of a pengci (literally "bumping porcelain," referring to faked fragility in accidents) you usually don't know it until it's too late.

Typically, victims of a con can see in hindsight that there were many signs that a con was in progress. In my case, it started with the sight of blood, which immediately made me want to do the right thing and take care of the guy.

Here's how it went down: Shopping for flowers on a street in the upscale neighborhood of Shunyi, I was just about to make a purchase for a creeping ivy.

Suddenly another shopper, who had been hovering next to me, started jumping up and down, wincing in pain and claiming that my little poodle, Yoyo, had bitten his finger which was trickling blood.

I turned around in time to see him throw a plastic wrapped sausage on the ground and Yoyo, who was leashed, looking awfully guilty. The man's friend instantly appeared out of nowhere and went into hysterics.

Already three clues had gone over my head. These men were nowhere near the type to be shopping for flowers on a Sunday afternoon. The sausage enticed Yoyo to jump on the man's leg, but she would never bite a hand that feeds her. The buddy's aggressive reaction was way over the top.

Yet my first instinct was to apply first aid. I took the victim to the restaurant restroom with his agitated friend already making phone calls to his uncle the doctor.

I was expecting a gash or tooth marks, but under cold running water the stream of blood stopped immediately and the wound was the size of a pinprick.

The bad-cop conman got even more excited when I offered apologies and assurances that Yoyo had had all her inoculations and that really there was nothing to worry about.

Yet I know many Beijingers are paranoid of animal bites and will do a rabies treatment even when nipped by their own housebound pet.

This fear is ingrained by the fact that every year thousands of people in China's countryside die agonizing deaths from rabies, although no one has been infected by a well-loved Beijing pet dog. It also doesn't help that many people don't understand that this scourge doesn't just spontaneously generate in canines.

So, trying to be sympathetic to his way of understanding (or lack thereof) I offered to take him to a hospital for an injection, which he readily and gratefully accepted. This should have been clue No.5 but the swindlers all seemed seriously concerned and thankful.

At a nearby hospital we discovered there were only a few hospitals downtown that could offer the treatment, which consists of five injections over five days at a minimum cost of about 1,500 yuan ($219).

Instead of troubling us with a trip downtown, they proposed a 2,000 yuan ($293) settlement. The light bulb went on, but the alternative was likely to involve the spilling of more blood, I paid up.

Last Spring Festival, I heard the heartbreaking story of a friend's nanny who was conned out of the year's savings while on her road home.

It involved a bit of avarice on her part and the conmen even got her mobile phone and ID, leaving her destitute in an unfamiliar backwater village with no resources to finish the last leg of her journey. She finally made it home, but instead of celebrating with gifts and joy, she spent the holidays lying in bed weeping at her own gullibility.

One of the most famous foreigner cons is the teahouse capper. I've heard of numerous tourists being befriended by sweet-talking college students wanting to improve their English. They show the newbies to town around and even offer to buy refreshments at a teahouse they just happen to be passing by.

Of course the tourist offers to pick up the tab, which somehow comes to hundreds of dollars. This scam has been going on for years near Tiananmen Square, where you would think an undercover sting could close it down in a snap.

Con games have a terrible side effect: It's making everyone dubious of everyone else.

Con artists are sapping our sense of humanity, wiping out the ethos of kindness that was once so prevalent here and forcing good Samaritans to look the other way. It's destroying hope for a harmonious society.

The author is the founder of R.D. Communications. billsiggins@ realdogcomm.cn