Why are Chinese tourists so badly behaved? | Hacker News Reader

Why are Chinese tourists so badly behaved?

japantimes.co.jp

59 pointsUltramanoid44 comments

Personal experience here: all nationalities of tourist are an equally mixed bag of good and bad, except the Chinese, who in my experience are uniformly awful. Just a visit to Yellowstone shows the constant damage they wreak on the landscape, ignoring signs and rangers, in order to get the perfect photo. Butting in line, spitting, speaking loudly over everyone else... they are intolerable. Which is strange, because every Chinese grad student I’ve ever worked with has been courteous, professional and in many cases, genuinely kind.

Maybe the other tourist nationality outlier is Israelis visiting the US. As far as I have seen, they are the nicest and most grateful tourists ever.

My personal experience while traveling in China is that it is an aggressive, confrontational, blunt, yet very friendly culture.

Cutting in line is common. It seems to annoy locals, but also seems like it's kind of light-hearted game for everyone. Grandmas get carte blanche to cut as they please, and if you get in their way they will hit you, but it's a grandma so it doesn't hurt and is quite funny the first time it happens.

Jay walking is rampant except at intersections that are staffed with numerous traffic police.

If you're fat, people will comment on your fatness while getting to know you for the first time. This is not meant to be offensive. Likewise if you're skinny, bald, old, etc.

There is an odd mix of authoritarian rule obsessed workers and then many who break the rules any chance they get.

They are extremely friendly and interested in a lot of foreigners. Chinese strangers would buy me food and translate for me without me even asking.

> Jay walking is rampant

In some countries (don't know about China) the concept of "jaywalking" doesn't even exist.

Most countries even. Where is it a thing outside the US?

In Poland for example. You are not allowed to cross the road if there is a pedestrian crossing within 100m range. Also, you can get fined for crossing the street on red light even if the street is completely empty of traffic.

I remember reading that technically jaywalking is not illegal in the U.S. either. You just will almost certainly die is all.

Any country that has street lights for pedestrians? In Germany, you get fined.

Worth pointing out that the Ampelmann is such a cultural icon in Berlin, there are stores where you can buy merchandise of the crosswalk man/woman logos:

https://www.ampelmann.de/en/

As an Aussie tourist in Berlin I once crossed the street against the Ampelmann, and to this day I remember the audible "tut tuts" and disgust of the German locals around me at my actions. Lesson learned: Respect the Ampelmann.

(On the flipside, I remember once talking to a Kenyan on a bus here in Australia, he was horrified that Australians were such mindless robots & so eager to follow government rules that we would even wait for a crosswalk light to tell us when to walk and when to stop.)

German (from Hamburg) here. We jaywalk all the time. Of course if there is heavy traffic then people usually go to the next traffic light as it will be faster but in my almost 30 years I have heard of maybe 1 incident where the police actually stopped a friend of mine. They didn't issue a fine and let him off with a warning.

The UK has pedestrian traffic lights, but there is no limit where you can cross.

Singapore at least.

What was the punishment for jaywalking in Singapore? $1000 fine? Or maybe caning?

Yeah but rarely enforced instead they put barriers in place specially in places with walkway bridges so that people cant jaywalk.

I think a lot of cultures have this inverted side, like how Japan is both serious/stoic, yet has silly media culture. Grow up in an authoritarian shadow and they kind of enjoy breaking unwritten rules.

I've had some similar experiences in Saudi Arabia. People are very friendly, but at the same time very aggressive. They'll corner you, block your way, and shout in your face like a drill sergeant, but it's all playful. They won't touch you and they mean no harm.

From my experience Israelis are extremely rude.

From personal experience they seem to be particularly prone to spitting and clearing their nostrils on the street. I'm sure it's common cultural practice in China but it's not appreciated in the UK.

I am a Chinese and I travel sometimes. Never been to Europe or America (but I really hope so), I've been to lotsa attractions in China, Singapore, Malaysia, etc etc. And in every single place I've been, there are really a buttload of shitty Chinese tourists. They just randomly spit around, throw whatever they are holding into shrubs, talk real loud in public, and when it's crowdy, one will push another. IMO It's not a matter of Chinese government or something, at least not on this one... I myself guess the reason of this is even the Chinese economic boom made lots of people rich, it didn't really make most people civilized (and self-aware). Hopefully things will be better in future.

This article is from 2016, so it's a little old.

One thing I found interesting was that while the author makes a superficial comparison to the "Ugly American" phenomenon, he doesn't actually draw a comparison to the similarities in economic rise.

Both phenomena occurred during/after times of economic booms that created a much larger middle class with a disposable income that could leave a culture bubble and see other places, whether it's people from the country going to the city ("hicks" and gawpers etc.) or people leaving their country to go elsewhere. That kind of naive cultural conflict will definitely lead to these kinds of actions.

I find this kind of comparison much more thoughtful and to me, compelling than any kind of "that's their [crappy] culture" discrimination. It also makes me wonder if we might see a rise of "Ugly Indians" or "Ugly Nigerians" as the middle class with a disposable income in those countries rises.

I work at an Australian university that has a good reputation in China and so attracts many Chinese international students. Possibly even 50% of the student population here is Chinese. I've personally found them to be extremely polite, courteous and easy to deal with.

The only cultural differences that get on my nerves is rubbish disposal and sometimes Chinese men seem to be a little rough with their girlfriends (It's entirely possible I'm just misinterpreting what I'm seeing). But if there is a location where a large number of Chinese people hang out, it will often be covered in trash and cigarette butts.

But I also remember a decade ago when the thing that annoyed everyone about Chinese people was constant spitting everywhere, yet that isn't really an issue anymore. So I'm sure in time our cultures will synchronize further.

Disclaimer edit: I’m slightly uncomfortable making statements like this about a particular group of people. This sort of conversation on the internet can do downhill fast. So I want to emphasise that I’m just referring to differences in culture and that I’m optimistic these differences will resolve themselves organically.

I'm a white Australian from a working class background and my perspective is that East and South-East Asians have integrated into Australian society very well. Even my most intolerant colleagues don't seem to notice that Asians aren't white. It's at the stage I won't be surprised if some of my children or grandchildren have a partly Asian background.

Those small cultural differences will vanish. I feel the days of Pauline Hanson warning of an Asian invasion are truly over here.

You can find something to complain about in most touristy folk from any country. Italians and Spaniards are particularly loud, Americans are arrogant, expect everyone to speak English, etc.

But it is remarkable that even in Taiwan, obviously of Chinese culture, many ( and I could probably safely say 'most' instead of 'many' ) think of tourists from the mainland as a rough, rude, loud, and generally dirty bunch.

> expect everyone to speak English

Tangent: When I visited Finland a few years ago, everyone I encountered spoke good English, except for one person. When I bought a bottle of water at the Helsinki airport, the store clerk couldn't understand a single word of English. At the airport store.

I went to Germany around 1996 for training. It was scheduled at the last minute and I had never left the US before so I didn't have time to learn German.

At the Munich airport I asked the lady behind the information desk how to get to the train, in English. I was extremely polite. She was so offended and would not speak to me. Luckily a traveler standing next to the desk helped me.

Munich International Airport, Information Desk - no English. That made me really afraid to approach locals even though most that I met were very friendly and spoke excellent English.

I've had almost the same exact experience in Paris very recently, and my unforgivable sin was to start by saying : "Good morning, I'm very sorry but I don't speak French. Do you..." I got cut off at this point before I could say the rest. ( ...know where I have to go to buy a HS train ticket ? )

The lady scolded me in French for a couple of minutes after which she got up and left the information desk, leaving me and everyone else behind me scratching our heads.

This is changing a lot, though. Keep in mind that the German unification was only in 1990 and I know very few people older than ~35-40 that had lived in East Germany got good or any English skills. That's already a fourth of all Germans, also your anecdote was from 20 years ago.

If any group of tourists can't behave themselves, then either police them or don't grant them visas. An undefended community ceases to be. Furthermore, if any group of tourists is getting away with causing problems, there's bigger, and more fundamental, issues that environmental or landmark destruction.

Sounds great until you realize how much money they bring in.

In my city, Chinese luxury spending alone is holding up most of the high end retail industry.

This is very much so. It is even used by the Chinese government as significant economic leverage over Taiwan. In times of political confrontation ( such as with the present DPP government ), the Chinese authorities regulate ( read : prevent or even stop completely ) tour operators from managing large numbers of Chinese tourists in Taiwan. This prompted the Taiwanese government's recent shift to strongly promote tourism in other Asian countries, starting with the many agreements with Japan in this regard.

> Criminal and indecent behavior should be policed, but anyone familiar with New York’s Flushing, Yeonnam-dong in Seoul or Tokyo’s Kita-Ikebukuro can tell you that only Chinese tourists are a concern. It’s the socialization that’s the problem. Chinese residents not only enrich and enliven cities, but the societies in which they live.

This seems like an oddly strained hedge from a journalist that ought not to fear retribution if they invite it in the first place.

When they are let loose from the leash? May sound sarcastic but maybe its the effect of experiencing freedom and their expression of living that freedom.

Absolutely not. They are unfortunately presenting their authentic selves. I don't get why people always draw every hypothesis back to the Chinese government. Incidentally, I would dare to suggest that the tourist Chinese are using the image of the recent Chinese might as an excuse to look down on the native customs.

China’s population is 1,403,500,365 and the majority are Chinese. That’s excluding all Chinese living and coming from other countries.

They have so many different cultures just in the China itself. That is why everyone has a different experience with Chinese.

Perhaps there are so many Chinese tourists these days that the bad ones stand out more than other races. Otherwise obviously they are a bag of good and bad.

And next to that there are some cultural differences that are not necessarily considered a bad behavior in some cultures. For instance speaking out load.

When will this anti-Chinese social media and news flurry end? Is posting a 2016 opinion piece with a loaded title like this (from the japantimes no less) likely to generate any semblance of a nuanced discussion? Or is it likely to devolved into racist personal, anecdotal circlejerking about how terrible all Chinese tourists are?

I'm glad this got flagged, but I'm also equally disappointed in how many upvotes this post garnered in the span of a few minutes. Shot right to the top of HN.

For what it's worth, a Taiwanese co-worker sent me the link, commenting along with it that in Japan we're too nice about this. In Taipei they raise hell when a mob of mainlanders behave like unruly five year old kids.

This is not about anti-Chinese sentiment at all. Spend five minutes talking to Chinese folks of Taiwan, Singapore, or Hong Kong, or you know what, even with Chinese studying or working in the West ( a part of the world which I am not a fan of, and less so every year ) and see what they tell you. This is a very specific issue about a very specific group of people in very specific circumstances.

I was in Lucerne, Switzerland in 2017 and during a morning jog by the lake, I saw a sign in English and Chinese that said don't feed the ducks. Later that afternoon when I walked by the sign, I saw a group of at least 40-50 tourists feeding the ducks next to the sign. Maybe people just let loose when they're abroad because the government is so strict when they're home?

Is the behavior really unusually bad compared to other travelers?

They list a murder and some other violence, not sure that is the same as selfie sticks...

Chinese (and to some extent Indian) groups of tourists tend to behave maladjusted compared to other tourists. You can observe it all around Europe too.

In the Netherlands a recent phenomenon is Chinese tourists wading through the famous tulip fields this time of year to get the perfect photographic memento. Tourists from other cultures mostly respect the societal boundaries that prevent you from just barging in and damaging a farmer's crop, but the Chinese tourist just doesn't see those boundaries (whether it is an explicit sign or just the common sense that these flower fields are not part of a theme park but an actual agricultural enterprise).

At any rate, to them everywhere they get herded to in touring buses is a theme park; historic city centres, tulip fields, authentic windmills, etc. They just don't see that people live there, or make a living, or that some old building may be a natural treasure, not a theme park replica you can safely climb on.

It might be a mindset thing. Chinese tourists seem to expect that people around them (tour guides, local staff) tell or show them explicitly what to do and where to go. Without guidance, they end up stepping into cordoned areas, passing no entry signs, and wandering onto private property.

The solution to the Chinese barging through your flowers seems to have been found in changing the communication strategy. Instead of signs forbidding entry (which get ignored, even when written in Chinese) they now put up banners asking visitors to respect the flowers (in Chinese) and not trample them. It seems to help a bit.

What a coincidence. This article was posted today:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/24/netherlands-tu...

The article lists "...according to local police, about 95 percent of petty crimes on Jeju are committed by Chinese", but that is less than useful without statistics on tourist demographics. It would be interesting to see a more comprehensive study - I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of confirmation bias (for Americans as well) due to their large portion of the tourist population.

80% according to this article: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2126785/sou...

I think the answer is No, Chinese are not worse behaved overall than other tourists that I have seen.

Their voices are a little louder sometimes, but that's the worst I can say. Individuals may behave badly, but then the same is true of individuals from any other nation.

I've had cause to ask two people to modify their behaviour at Tokyo landmarks recently. One was a juvenile Italian swinging from a torii gate, the other I believe was Nepali and he was just standing on the wrong side of a picket fence to get a better photo of himself.

I've seen a lot of Chinese, but they are no worse or better behaved than others in my experience.

At the Louvre in Paris there is a sign asking tourists not to poop in the street. The sign is only in Mandarin.

Certainly not worse than terrorists/bombings/etc. from cultures which I will not name.

I think the bad behavior of tourists is a result of feelings of exceptionalism. The rules don’t apply to them. Americans were accused of this, and before Americans it was the British, and now it’s the Chinese. Whichever next country reaches the level of affluence that their citizens can travel for leisure, we might see it for them too

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