Many people are familiar with the concept of the “ugly American,” the tourist who goes to other countries and is loud, boorish, and otherwise a poor representation of America. These are the kind of people who don’t learn the local language, and think that speaking English louder and slower will get their point across.
Most, however, don’t tend to think of citizens from other countries acting in this way, but that’s exactly what the People’s Republic of China is facing right now: outbound Chinese tourists who are making the country look bad.
For the last decade or so, China has been using outgoing tourism as a way to improve the country’s image abroad and educating tourists on how they can best represent their homeland. But there are some—and it should be noted that this is a small fraction of the total number of outbound Chinese tourists—who are simply embarrassing.
Stories of Chinese travelers who throw water or hot tea at stewardesses, or desecrate holy temples in South Korea or Thailand, have made the rounds and embarrassed China. This has led to blacklists of people who aren’t allowed to fly out of international airports for two years and who are publicly shamed for their actions. There are petitions to governments to prevent Chinese tourists from arriving in large numbers, even in Hong Kong.
In the recently published book The World Meets Asian Tourists, Wu Mao-Ying writes, “The boorish behavior of any group of national citizens matters, but such acts are less important if the tourists from a source country number in the hundreds. When they can be counted in millions, the urgency of finding ways to shift from unacceptable behaviors to tolerable manners is a matter of considerable urgency.”
While the Chinese government is trying to solve this issue, there are far more Chinese tourists who don’t embarrass their home and are well received in places they visit. They tend to have a better grasp on the languages and cultures of the places they’re visiting. In the United States they are often mistaken for American-born Chinese. But the good tourists aren’t standing out. As with the story of the “ugly American,” the stories of the bad tourists that spread and reinforce stereotypes, and stereotypes can be really hard to shake.
Photo: A group of Chinese tourists in Austria. Credit: Victority / Shutterstock, Inc.