The friend said they recently hosted a foreign guest traveling with his son, who was 11 or 12. One of the worst Arti heard from a friend, who also runs an Airbnb guesthouse. Sometimes they don't return until 3 am or 4 am."Īnd then there are just stories of plain old bad behavior that has nothing to do with cultural difference. Many enjoy drinking and return late at night. "Westerners have a stronger culture of going clubbing at night. Sometimes the stress gets so bad that Arti finds himself unable to sleep at night. Though he doesn't want to negatively impact his guests' stay (or his own reviews), he's also constantly worried about his relationship with his neighbors. But he said many guests ignore the warnings, which has left him in something of a pickle. He posted notices to guests who would be staying out late that a number of their neighbors in hutong are elderly and turn in early. It wasn't long after opening his bed-and-breakfast that Arti realized he would need to do something to combat the growing problem with after-hours noise. Many of them traveled to Beijing, which has given the city a front-row seat to the best and worst of overseas visitors. Yet amid the media hubbub surrounding Chinese tourists, some local residents have pointed out that foreign visitors to China aren't so perfect themselves, an issue that's gaining increasing importance as the number of foreign tourists grows.Īccording to data released by the China National Tourism Administration, of about 26 million entries by foreigners into China in 2015, around 8.25 million came for sightseeing and leisure purposes. Meanwhile, in January 2015, the China National Tourism Administration announced that it would be blacklisting badly behaved tourists, which would not only lead to public shame, but could prevent them from traveling in the future. The Chinese government became so concerned about the bad rap its tourists were earning that it issued guidelines for civilized behavior while traveling abroad. Tourist behavior has been a hot topic in China in recent years, thanks to a number of stories in both the domestic and foreign media of Chinese tourists behaving badly, everything from scrawling their names on priceless relics to allowing their children to relieve themselves on the street. "They usually don't speak loudly in public, so I guess they just feel like they can talk once they are inside their own place." "You can't say it's uncivilized behavior, because they don't know that it disturbs other people," Arti said. In addition to lacking modern soundproofing, courtyards are often occupied by families and older folks whose harmony depends on a bit of late-night consideration. That's because courtyard houses, traditional stone structures that find residents living in close quarters, aren't exactly designed for young partiers. "A number of laowai tourists tend to return home late, and they might bang the door closed or talk loudly inside the house, which annoys the neighbors," he told Metropolitan. The foremost problem he's run into? Noise. Though he emphasizes that badly behaved foreign tourists are by no means the norm, these bad apples tend to stand out especially because of the nature of Arti's business: an Airbnb bed-and-breakfast that he runs out of his courtyard home in one of Beijing's older areas. Photo: Li Hao/GTĪs the operator of a guesthouse, Beijing native Arti has seen his fair share of foreign tourists - both those who are well-behaved and those who are not so much. While Chinese tourists may be notorious overseas for their bad behavior, their foreign counterparts in China have also caused controversy among locals with their manners, or lack thereof.
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