In defence of Chinese tourists

After graduation, I trotted around Europe with nothing but my backpack and it was great. I stayed in hostels and couch surfed, got sick multiple times, and took everything else the journey threw at me in my stride.

And then a bus would pull up, 50 people would come off it and I would lose my mind.

I used to get so annoyed when a bus load of Chinese tourists pull up and consume everything in sight with their selfie sticks, smartphones, tablets and cameras. I hated how loud they were in their big groups and how they would almost stab me in the eye with their umbrellas as I walked past them in the narrow streets of Florence.

I hated that they never queued up and waited their turn.

By the time autumn had come around, the large crowds of tourists from all over the world had gone home and Europe seemed to have calmed down a little, or so I thought.

At that point, I had made my way to Bergen and booked myself a rather expensive boat trip along the fjords of Flåm. I was really excited and was looking forward to the peace and quiet nature could offer me.

I charged my phone and loaded up my favourite jazz playlist, ready to be recharged by nature. As I waited to get on the boat, not one, but two tour buses pulled up and way too many people came out. The atmosphere transformed from a serene zen-like spa to one akin a zombie apocalypse.

My blood was boiling but there was nothing I could do about it. I would be stuck on a boat for two hours along the most beautiful parts of the world with two bus loads of over-excited tourists. Great.

I got on and tried my best to find a secluded spot, somewhere warm, private and would give me a good view of the fjords. “Fat chance, Nic,” said the universe who was hell-bent on teaching me a good lesson.

I found no such spot and after 10 minutes of sitting on the top deck with no shelter and feeling my face go numb from the cold, I caved and found a seat in the cafe. The place was noisy and stuffy. It was like all the Chinese tourists in Bergen decided to get on the same damn trip as I did and there was no where to escape.

I sat next to a Chinese couple who were awfully quiet and the husband asked me in Mandarin if I was “with the group”. I shook my head with every bit of “hell no” I could muster. It was like the three of us bonded over our annoyance at the horrible situation. We sat in silence and stared out the window as the beauty of the Norwegian fjords took our breath away.

Behind me, I could hear the tour guide speaking in Mandarin to some folks on his tour. With my limited comprehension, I understood that he was telling them about the fjords, how they were formed, how high some of them were and what it all looked like in the summer. I cursed myself for not knowing the language better.

I heard someone crack a joke and laughter broke out. I turned around and what I saw hit me, hard.

Apart from the tour guide, they looked like a family. There were children and parents, and aunties and uncles, and ah gongs and ah mahs. It was a picture I had seen one too many times, a picture that I was once and still am a part of. Their laughter reminded me of Chinese New Year back home and their boisterous conversations brought me back to dinner times in my ah mah’s house at 6pm in SS2.

It dawned on me that they were travelling as a family, not an immediate, cellular family (a Western notion now adopted as a norm), but a family with second cousins three times removed, and their kids too. I closed my eyes and recalled the loud belly shaking laughter my gong gong used to make when he was still with us. I felt the joy and festivity that I usually feel when all my family is with me. I was envious.

One could make comparisons to the crap South East Asians have to put up when 18-year olds, who have just finished high school, travel around and mess up our hood. But that’s a controversial medium post best left for another day.

I think that regardless of where you or your family comes from, travelling with all of them brings out the loudest parts of us because we feel at home. There’s no need for walls, masks and personas, home is where family is. A place and a feeling that I had not come close to finding while I was “on the road” as long-term travellers say (I’m also using the term “long-term” very loosely here).

I stopped trying to listen to my podcast, I couldn’t hear it anyway, it was too noisy. Instead, I let that strange feeling of familiarity wash over me. In the middle of the fjords in Norway, I felt like I was getting a taste of home and it felt good.

This post was written in November 2015.