They are seen as pushy, loud, impolite, unruly, and they are everywhere.
And although destination countries welcome the tourism dollars the Chinese spend, they loathe the chaos and hassle some mainland tourists bring upon their cities and other tourists.
“Why can’t they just behave?” people wonder, some aloud.
I have been asking myself the same question in the past months after reporting on the uncivilised, sometimes galling behaviour of some compatriots.
It seems that every time a “rude Chinese tourist" story is published on SCMP.com, it goes straight into the site's top 10 most read articles - one such article even managed to crawl back to the top months after it was posted. So I decided to give the question some serious thought.
I read up on the topic, talked to tourism experts and travel agents and chatted with some of these tourists who are now at the centre of public anger.
It soon dawned on me that the real question to ask is: “Why are the Chinese rude?”
Yong Chen, tourism researcher and post-doctoral fellow at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said most “bad” tourists don’t intend to be “bad” or “tourists”, they are just being themselves - they are being Chinese.