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.

What an odd story.

I would not be impressed if I had strangers knocking on my door wanting to use the toilet, play on my children's toys, trespassing through my gardens and offering to cut the grass.

Not at all racist though

I was a day Phil at a boarding schools with quite a few HK Chinese pupils. I also had a friend who was British born Chinese and a day pupil.
We lived quite close to the school and my English/Chinese friend asked me one day if I would mind if a group of the Chinese boarders came to look around my house. My Mum spoke to the house master who explained that they were very interested to see a " normal" English house.
We brought 2 car loads home for a few hours, they brought presents for my mum and she served tea and scones. They took loads of photos and had a lovely time.

I'm half Chinese and a BBC one at that. I worked in higher education forever and a day. The Chinese students adored me because they felt as if they could ask in detail about English culture and they are indeed fascinated by it. I was Auntie to many over the years. I don't see racism here. There was a programme organised where I worked where we could bring home students for dinner so they could visit an English family. I bought loads back from loads of different countries over the years. There were never enough colleagues willing to do this so always a shortage of hosts.

Real racism experienced by me includes being called a Chinese bitch, chopsticks and being asked if I'm number 69 on the takeaway menu by leering men.

Your a hand wringing liberal aren't you op, you have the best intentions but actually give real racism a chance because people get pissed off at stuff like this and it detracts from real issues.

Not just ridiculous but part of the xenophobic narrative the DM loves to spin. I agree with you OP, though it is fairly harmless compared with a lots of other racist activity following Brexit. The foreign tourists are portrayed as descending on a picturesque English village like a bunch of freaks. It should be fairly easy in the age of the Internet to ascertain why they are there instead of speculating with xenophobic undertones.
Let's bear in mind that it is often the Brtish who travel in groups around the world behaving in just the same way.

As for silly season, not quite so slow news at the moment is it? .

MN is batshit crazy atm.... Have schools finished early?

It's just more fun to string it out as a mystery.

Otherwise it would be a single line story 'tourists come to English village as it's name means 'hairy arse' in local suspect and they think it's very funny to confuse the locals'.

Get a grip OP.

YABVU

Suspect? Gah, dialect .

You seemnabsolutely determined to be offended by something not offensive. Who cares, really?

I don't really think it's racist. A bit "othering" maybe, but not really in a mean way.

I agree with Pie that there are a lot worse things some of us have experienced that are definitely racist.

Someone asked a friend from China. "Kidlington is apparently being marketed by Chinese tourist agencies as a beautiful English village on the way to Bicester Village shopping centre," he said."

So not so mysterious after all.

I would not be impressed if I had strangers knocking on my door wanting to use the toilet, play on my children's toys, trespassing through my gardens and offering to cut the grass.

There have been threads on here in the past about knocking on strangers' doors to use the loo. I was surprised by how many people said they would be perfectly willing to knock on doors for this reason.

Last night when the thread was posted the story didn't have the bit about Kidlington being marketed by Chinese agencies, that's an update.

Thank you FTW63.

piemernator, contrary to numerous assertions on this thread I am not "determined to be offended" by this story. It doesn't offend me at all actually; it annoys me. However what most certainly DOES offend me is your statement that by starting a thread on this story I am "giving real racism a chance". Have you never heard of the zero tolerance approach, or the everyday sexism project?

At no point have I said anywhere that this is up there with serious race hate (nb my choice of "a bit racist" in the thread title for a start). However I am annoyed that it portrays the Chinese tourists with their funny ways as so "other" that nobody could possibly work out a way just to bloody ask them why they are visiting. This approach is used, as others have said, to string out the mystery for the sake of a very lame story that, astonishingly, was deemed worthy by Sky News of the expense of sending a reporting team to cover it and which has, I understand, now gone global.

And as for asking why I posted in AIBU and then refused to accept that my interpretation of this was unreasonable, since when was there a rule that said that AIBU was some sort of majority voting system? I find others views' interesting, so thanks for posting, but I don't have to accept them.

However I am annoyed that it portrays the Chinese tourists with their funny ways as so "other" that nobody could possibly work out a way

People walking into your garden to have a bounce on your trampoline or pick nettles IS unusual/noteworthy/outside of the norm Jessie

Isn't good humoured bemusement a pretty, mild and good-natured response?

That depends where you live - my best friend lives in a particularly attractive part of Amsterdam, everyone there is so used to random tourists climbing their garden fences to take photos and knocking on their doors to 'take a peek inside' it's an annoyance that is simply part of living there. She has to keep her blinds closed permanently in summer time otherwise she has people peering in and taking photos through the window. Apparently mostly Italian and Japanese tourists, although that could be just because here at least they both tend to tour about the place in great obvious packs.

In Dublin there is a permanent group of Spanish students hanging around Bono's house. Nobody knows why it's only ever Spanish, it is a mystery.

Which I guess is my way of saying people are peculiar. Don't see how wondering about them makes anyone racist though.

Op I agree it is racist because if this have been a group of white English football fan going into people garden and using kids toys like the trampoline the police would have been called.

I'm not sure if there are any more ways I can say this: the behaviour of the Chinese tourists is definitely a bit odd and British people finding it odd is not in any way racist.

The thing that I find racist is that the residents and media are making a huge fuss about speculating about what they are doing there instead of just asking them to explain via an interpreter. A bit like you might speculate why a dog is behaving in a certain odd way.

The thing that I find racist is that the residents and media are making a huge fuss about speculating about what they are doing there instead of just asking them to explain via an interpreter. A bit like you might speculate why a dog is behaving in a certain odd way.

That isn't racist. Haven't you ever read a local paper? They specialise in guessing about why something is the way it is without ever researching it properly!

Racist? Odd yes, racist no.

I was be very pissed off if I kept finding strangers in my garden or wanting to use my toilet and they would soon learn a couple of words of English!

The thing that I find racist is that the residents and media are making a huge fuss about speculating about what they are doing there instead of just asking them to explain via an interpreter. A bit like you might speculate why a dog is behaving in a certain odd way.

It's a local press story that's been picked up nationally. Those puff stories are always an exercise in over inflating some minor point of gossip.

It would have been exactly the same for any usual occurrence no matter who the protagonists were.

Who would 'pay' this £50 for an interpreter then??

I know a number of people who live there and the general view is puzzlement. Of course there are people of Chinese origin who live there but they have jobs and lives - they're not there to hang around trying to translate for pensioners.

The main reason for the bafflement is that it is a not very attractive small town mostly built in the 1960s with lots of badly planned ribbon development and the Thames valley police headquarters. It's like having tourist trips to any other suburb in the uk - day out on a residential street in Croydon anyone?