Guidelines for Chinese tourists

It is instructive to note that, if the above correspondence is any guide, the average Chinese citizen has not improved significantly in manners, intercultural sensitivity, or personal refinement since my last visit to the motherland in 2003. I recall my shock on my first visit, when the impression struck me most forcibly that these must be the rudest people on earth.   

But we have to cut them some slack. They’ve been through a peasant-based revolution, plus the horrors of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. You can’t expect them to have the elegant manners of mandarins. And there are 1.3 billion of them. They have to yell just to be heard.  

Still, based on those long-ago visits, I have devised five simple rules that ought to be communicated to every incoming Chinese tourist. They might be translated into Chinese and stamped in their passports. The text might go like this:

“Welcome to Thailand. The Thai people will love you if you follow these two do’s and three don’ts:

1. Speak softly.

2. Smile.

3. Don’t smoke.

4. Don’t push. 

5. Don’t spit.

Experience shows that a velvet glove is most effective when accompanied by an iron fist, so a note of warning might be added: “If reports reach the Public Security Bureau that you have violated any of these rules during your sojourn in Thailand, immediately upon returning you will be exiled to a gulag in Heilongjiang to shovel  snow.”

Apparently Bangkok’s Grand Palace is way ahead of the Chiang Mai temples when it comes to handling young Chinese women dressed in shorts.  You simply issue them wraparound sarongs. Charging a modest fee and requiring them to deposit their passports might be appropriate so that they won’t steal them. 

S Tsow

Samut Prakan