If one’s aim is to suss out ethnicity when visiting some highly trafficked international destination in the ASEAN region — such as a Bangkok, for example — complicating matters, in addition to the tendency for Asians of varying nationalities to appear similar to the untrained Western eye, is that a huge percentage of the Thai population has Chinese blood pumping through their veins as a result of immigration in centuries past.
Difficulties in identification notwithstanding, Chinese tourists are best avoided entirely, if at all possible — for myriad reasons I document at length in my leading expat memoir, of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, but mostly because they’re literally the worst people in the world*.
*A caveat: By and large, Hong Kongers and Taiwanese, who are ethnically Chinese, are mostly decent. It’s the mainlanders, who had their culture destroyed by the Cultural Revolution and other atrocities for decades by the CCP, who do the pooping on the grounds of the Louvre and the spitting on the floor inside, and the smoking right in front of no-smoking signs.
Here are some telltale signs that what you’re looking at is a Chinese tourist, so that you can take all due precautions to avoid interactions with them to the maximum extent possible.
Chinese tourist hallmark #1: Rolly suitcases
I get the appeal of suitcases on wheels, having lugged my stuff in backpacker gear all over Asia. 50 pounds on your back tends to weigh on you after a while.
I refuse to use the rolly suitcases, though, because I feel like a fruitcake rolling them down city streets.
The Chinese love them, though, to the exclusion of any other form of luggage.
And it’s not as if they pack their rolly suitcase for the plane ride over from Shenzhen and then utilize other, more handy modes of transportation for their personal effects while on the ground; they roll these things all over the city — to markets, restaurants, wherever.
Chinese tourist hallmark #2: Distasteful socks
You’re probably familiar with the adage that you can tell a lot about a man by his shoes.
In the case of the Chinese, it applies to their socks, as they have a fetish for calf or knee-length socks in combination with dress shoes and casual gym shorts — just for walking around. It’s deeply unsettling, but incredibly predictive of a Chinese ethnicity in any given subject.
Relatedly, they’ll also often wear brightly-colored, neon socks that do not match any other items of clothing they have on.
I don’t know if Mao outlawed socks as capitalist luxury items or whatever during the Cultural Revolution, but they seem to still be in the process of learning how to wear them.
Related: Existential Angst in 'Nam (50 Years Late)
Chinese tourist hallmark #3: Tour guide flags
If, in Bangkok, you spot a single-colored flag plodding along ten feet in the air, you’ve got a telltale mark of a horde of Chinese tourists being herded along by some poor Thai son of a b***h tasked with tramping them through the city on some discount tour package that they bought on Alibaba.
(The Chinese, in addition to being exceptionally rude to Thai staff at restaurants, resorts, etc., are also well-known for their, to put it diplomatically, frugality. I have personally known several Thai tour guides who simply refuse Chinese clients — which they can do because they are not subject to Western-style anti-discrimination lawsuits — because, they explain, the abuse simply isn’t worth the money.)
Chinese tourist hallmark #4: Selfie sticks
Obviously, the selfie stick isn’t an exclusively Chinese tourist prop, but it is ubiquitous among Chinese tourists.
In other words, not all selfie sticks are carried by Chinese tourists, but all Chinese tourists carry selfie sticks — at all times, everywhere.
A few years back, in fact, one of the selfie-stick Chinese tourists fell to his death at the Grand Canyon.
