To think this is ridiculous and a bit racist?

[JessieMcJessie]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-36733450

Have read and seen this story in several places now, including a filmed segment on Sky News. Chinese tourists have been coming in large numbers to Kidlington and taking selfies etc in residential streets. Some reports of them ringing doorbells to ask to use toilets. Locals apparently "baffled" and have not been able to find out why they are coming because "they don't speak enough English". Theories being bandied about such as "it's mentioned in an episode of Inspector Morse" and "maybe something to do with Harry Potter?".

So the great and good of the national press are filing reports left right and centre and not one single one has been able to find a bilingual English/Mandarin speaker in the Oxfordshire area to just bloody ask the next coach load who turn up? Much more fun to stay deliberately in the dark and treat them like a freak show eh?

What a load of nonsense.

It is racist because they are treating the Chinese as people with whom communication is impossible, and pointing and staring instead.

Impossible? Oh Lord.

What do you mean?

I think you are treating them more 'exotic' than the article. Plenty of them will be able to speak English.

No, the local resident is given the number, paid for by the paper, because then the reporter doesn't have to wait around for the next coach load

So the local newspaper pays for an interpreter to come out to accost tourists?
a) local papers don't have budgets for that and b)how is that any better or nicer to the tourists?

Armysal the reports say they don't and based on my 6 years living in Hong Kong and dealing a lot with the Mainland I can well believe that.

""So in fact British coach companies are duping Chinese tourists and then locals and the media are laughing at them. Lovely""

It is the Chinese agencies that are marketing Kidlington.

It does have houses with thatched roofs and is, in parts, a traditional English village, as pictured by people from other countries, so no-ones being ripped off.

This story has been written to increase publicity, not to laugh at anyone. These coaches turning up, with people who look different/from a different culture, are a novelty, as they would be, anywhere, in the World, that is the equivalent of Kidlington.

Because userlongnumber rather than talking about them, someone is talking to them. And it would cost about 50 quid for an interpreter to have a 5 minute chat on the phone with one and find out why they had come, but instead they manufacture a ridiculous story by not asking.

Well the locals are missing a trick if they arent charging admission fees to their gardens and putting their spare rooms on air bnb

They're requesting that tour stop. The article says so. They're not being duped.

Is this news story triggering some other memory for you OP? Your posts are bemusing.

The story runs better as a mystery. Nobody has much interest in solving it definitively.

But there is information in that article that is explanatory.

The truth is probably that the root answer is hard to articulate. Even without a language barrier.

FGS unclench.

They're requesting it because they've been misinformed. If the whole thing is being started by Chinese agencies, the local bus companies are clearly in cahoots with them. The BBC article is somewhat benign but the Sky News feature had a scene with locals laughing at how the Chinese were "hilariously" posing with bunches of nettles and taking pictures of wheely bins and speculating about how they probably don't have wheely bins in China.

This thread is funny.

i would be fuming if some strange person decided to have a picnic in my garden.

Well we can't comment on what we haven't seen, but it seems like entirely benign indulgent amusement to me.

As eve said, as they are wandering into gardens etc they could have had a much cooler reception.

Acknowledging a language barrier isn't racist. Nor is failing to pay for an interpreter when there is no real need to do so. This thread is weird.

Of course it's racist.

Someone, somewhere, said something and shock horror they had a different skin tone...

Racism for sure.

Get a bloody grip

Racism? theres absolutely nothing racist about any of the article or the way the locals are treating the Chinese people. I think you need to get a grip Jessie.

Racism?? God I think you need to get out more and stop trying to find racism where it doesn't exist!!

Way to late for this

And yes to your comment Just5minswithDacre

Bloody hell op, talk about clutching at straws to find something to be offended about!

If it were me who lived there I would not be arsed to wait in, call the newspaper, to arrange the interpreter, go and drag a tourist off the street and make them talk to them etc like you are suggesting.

Actually, I think it is the tourists who are treating the residents like animals, if you want to you inflammatory terms. They're the ones with their cameras out and peering into their homes you know, like in a zoo!!

This.

OP you belittle genuine racism by trying to call this rascist. It isn't in any way

Do you mean xenophobia rather than racism OP?

Not sure why I'm replying as OP has already insisted that it IS in fact racist anyway.

Has it occurred to you OP that maybe it's "just one of those places" that coaches stop on these tours? I have stopped at some of the most obscure locations imaginable on my various trips around the world, and interpreter or no, I would not have been able to tell someone why the coach decided to stop there! Nor could I say why so many coach loads of English tourists end up in shanty towns in Africa and South America etc to take pictures of downtrodden locals! In these circumstances I think it's often the locals, rather than the tourists, that get the short end of the stick.