Chinese tourists stand out as much for their numbers as their bad behaviour
Bernard Chan says that, given time, they will adopt better manners
Some 20 years ago, I was waiting for a Hong Kong flight at a boarding gate in Bangkok airport. The ground staff finally made the announcement that boarding was about to start. And, within seconds, a huge crowd of passengers had swamped the gate, as if they were trying to push their way onto the aircraft.
It was my first experience of mainland Chinese tourists. In those days, mainlanders were just discovering overseas leisure travel. The numbers were small, they had to join organised package tours, and the main destinations were Hong Kong, Macau and a few capital cities in Southeast Asia.
Nowadays, mainlanders travel all over the world, many independently rather than in groups. The number of outbound trips from the mainland went over 100 million for the first time last year, and many of these were not travelling or flying for the first time. They are mostly as orderly as anyone else.
Yet they have a poor reputation. Badly behaved Chinese tourists are now a frequent international news story.
In Hong Kong, we remember particular incidents: the mainlanders' child who ate food on the MTR, and the visitors who let their child go to the toilet in the street.
Internationally, there is the Chinese tourist who carved his name in an ancient Egyptian monument, and regular reports of mainlanders fighting over seats on aircraft.