China tourists' boorish ways raise blushes
From faking marriage certificates to get honeymoon discounts in the Maldives to letting children defecate on the floor of a Taiwan airport, Chinese tourists have recently found themselves at the centre 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 travellers, people in the world's second-largest economy are starting to ask why their countrymen and women are so badly behaved.
When a story broke recently that a 15-year-old Chinese boy had scratched his name on a sculpture in a 3,500-year-old temple in Egypt's Luxor, the furore was such that questions were even asked about it at a Foreign Ministry news briefing.
"There are more and more Chinese tourists travelling to other countries in recent years," ministry spokesman Hong Lei 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."
Other incidents have attracted similar anger, including that of a mother who let her children defecate on the floor of Kaohsiung Airport in Taiwan - just metres from a toilet - after putting newspaper down first.
To be sure, the influx of newly-wealthy Chinese travelling around world has brought economic benefits widely welcomed in many countries, and many tourists are well-behaved and respectful.
More than 83 million Chinese tourists travelled overseas last year, and Chinese expenditure on travel abroad reached US$102 billion (S$129 billion) last year, the highest in the world according to the United Nations' World Tourism Organization.
~News courtesy of Omy~
From faking marriage certificates to get honeymoon discounts in the Maldives to letting children defecate on the floor of a Taiwan airport, Chinese tourists have recently found themselves at the centre 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 travellers, people in the world's second-largest economy are starting to ask why their countrymen and women are so badly behaved.
When a story broke recently that a 15-year-old Chinese boy had scratched his name on a sculpture in a 3,500-year-old temple in Egypt's Luxor, the furore was such that questions were even asked about it at a Foreign Ministry news briefing.
"There are more and more Chinese tourists travelling to other countries in recent years," ministry spokesman Hong Lei 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."
Other incidents have attracted similar anger, including that of a mother who let her children defecate on the floor of Kaohsiung Airport in Taiwan - just metres from a toilet - after putting newspaper down first.
To be sure, the influx of newly-wealthy Chinese travelling around world has brought economic benefits widely welcomed in many countries, and many tourists are well-behaved and respectful.
More than 83 million Chinese tourists travelled overseas last year, and Chinese expenditure on travel abroad reached US$102 billion (S$129 billion) last year, the highest in the world according to the United Nations' World Tourism Organization.
~News courtesy of Omy~
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