From faking marriage certificates to get honeymoon discounts in the Maldives to letting children defecate on the floor of an airport in Taiwan, Chinese tourists have recently found themselves at the center of controversy and anger.
Thanks to microblogging sites in China, accounts of tourists behaving badly spread like wildfire across the country, provoking disgust, ire and soul-searching.
While in the past, such reports might have been dismissed as attacks on the good nature of Chinese travelers, people in the world’s second-largest economy are starting to ask why their countrymen and women are so badly behaved.
Photo: Reuters
“Objectively speaking, our tourists have relatively low-civilized characters,” said Liu Simin, researcher with the Tourism Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“Overseas travel is a new luxury. Chinese who can afford it compare with each other and want to show off,” Liu said. “Many Chinese tourists are just going abroad, and are often inexperienced and unfamiliar with overseas rules and norms.”
When a story broke recently that a 15-year-old Chinese boy had scratched his name into a 3,500-year-old temple in Egypt’s Luxor, the furor was such that questions were even asked about it at a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs news briefing.
“There are more and more Chinese tourists traveling to other countries in recent years,” ministry spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) said on Monday.
“We hope that this tourism will improve friendship with foreign countries and we also hope that Chinese tourists will abide by local laws and regulations and behave themselves,” Hong said.
Other incidents have attracted similar anger, including that of a mother who let her children defecate on the floor of the Kaohsiung International Airport in Taiwan, just meters from a toilet. She did put newspaper down first.
Embarrassment over the behavior of some Chinese tourists has reached the highest levels of government, which has tried to project an image of a benign and cultured emerging power whose growing wealth can only benefit the world.
This month, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang (汪洋) admonished the “uncivilized behavior” of certain Chinese tourists, in remarks widely reported by state media and reflecting concern about how the increasingly image-conscious country is seen overseas.
“They make a terrible racket in public places, scrawl their names on tourist sites, ignore red lights when crossing the road and spit everywhere. This damages our national image and has a terrible effect,” Wang said.
The central government has reissued guidelines on its main Web site on what it considers acceptable behavior for tourists, including dressing properly, lining up and not shouting.
To be sure, the influx of newly wealthy Chinese traveling around the world has bought economic benefits widely welcomed in many countries, and many tourists are well-behaved and respectful.
More than 83 million Chinese tourists traveled overseas last year and Chinese expenditure on travel abroad reached US$102 billion last year, the highest in the world, according to the UN World Tourism Organization.
By 2020, about 200 million Chinese are expected to take an overseas holiday every year.
Criticism of bad behavior has in the past been leveled at US, Japanese and Taiwanese tourists, when they were also enjoying new wealth and going abroad for the first time.
Eventually, experts say, the criticism will fade.
“Traveling is a learning experience for tourists,” Zhejiang University tourism professor Wang Wanfei said. “They learn how to absorb local culture in the process and get rid of their bad tourist behavior.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese