Why Thousands of Chinese Tourists Started Coming to a Random British Village 

For those of you that missed it, we made a new channel! It's called Jet Lag: The Game: ru-vid.com/show-UCxkM67T_Iele-mRVUiBkRqg And you get to see us on camera! The HAI writers (Ben and Adam) and host (Sam) compete against each other with travel-based games. In season one, we play Connect 4, but using actual American states. We have to travel to state capitals and complete a challenge to claim a state. Go watch it. Please. We'll never be able to afford to buy a waterpark unless that channel takes off. That's something we need to do. I don't have time to explain why. Please watch the channel.

Had some Asian tourists sit in on my parents wedding. Camera pans across the aisle as my parents exited the church and there’s a random Asian family sitting as far back as possible. no one knew who they were until my grandpa finally saw the video and went “oh they were visiting and had never seen a Catholic wedding before and nicely asked if they could sit in so I said yes.” Whoever those people were, they were very respectful and kept to their word because none of us noticed they were there lol. They sat in the back and quietly watched a wedding. Hope those strangers are doing well.

The Chinese asking the locals if they could mow their lawns is literally the exact equivalent of western tourists visiting Asia asking if they could plow and/or plant rice in our fields. My father and other farmers in his village were extremely baffled and amused at the same time as to why these white people would want to get into the stinking mud for pictures lol. I even remember one farmer saying "free labor, I guess" and I'd imagine some random British bloke saying the same thing while watching a Chinese tourist mowing his lawn.

I can't wait for Chinese tourists to start showing up in my town for an "authentic taste of American suburbia"

The big mystery to me was why they couldn't just ask the tourists for the answer, but it finally makes sense since the tourists themselves didn't understand the reason either.

For your information, Chinese tourists travel in groups because of: 1. It’s easy to apply a visa when you are traveling with a travel agency. 2. Most of the Chinese people can’t speak foreign languages. Within a tour, the guide will help to solve the language barrier. 3. You don’t need to look for hotels, restaurants, cars, interesting places, etc. by yourself. The travel agency did everything for you. 4. Traveling in groups is usually cheaper than traveling by oneself. 5. Most of the people who travel with a tour group are visiting a foreign country for the first time in their lives. They are afraid to travel alone. etc.

I used to work at a tourist attraction in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, and a few times a week we had to open at 6:45AM to get 2-10 buses of Chinese tourists through the tour. I still don’t understand why we were a stop, it was a tour out of Canada that went to New York, DC, Atlantic City, and… us. And they took *so many* pictures of our cornfield.

I used to be a regular at a pub that occasionally had Chinese tour busses turn up. They'd arrive, immediately be served a pint of Guinness which they'd take a photo with, sip, decide they didn't really like, discard it, and then be shuffled back on the bus, presumably to get dinner at a Chinese restaurant somewhere. The weird thing is that this wasn't Ireland, it was in fact on the opposite side of the world; New Zealand. From that moment on, I decided that I would never understand Chinese tourism. Though one hilarious day, one of the tourists went round chugging pints discarded by his fellow bus travelers. He must have sunk at least four in the half hour that they were there.

When I 16 I was doing my gold Duke of Edinburgh's award hike in the highlands in the middle of a massive storm, a group of Chinese tourists hopped out a truck and started taking pictures of us in the road... I wonder what they told their friends about those photos 😐

I used to live near there! The trains make all their announcements in chinese too, and I never knew why

"Whatever this is" is a canal lock, if anyone's wondering. The UK has a fairly extensive canal network so they're all over the place here - just don't fall in! Canals are usually only about four feet deep so if you fall in you can just stand up, but locks are often ten to fourteen feet or more (and, if the paddles are open, have some strong currents as well). We always used to be amazed at the groups of Chinese tourists that we'd see at Warwick Castle - we'd see them come in through the castle entrance, take a picture standing in front of the East gate, then leave (for people who haven't been there, Warwick Castle is huge and largely intact, with several walkthrough exhibitions of the castle dressed as it would have been at various points in its history, a ramparts walk and multiple shows - it takes a full day to do even most of the things on offer, and that's without the added-cost attractions like the dungeon). We later found out that they were on trips from London that covered Kenilworth Castle, Warwick Castle and Stratford-upon-Avon in a single day, so they had eight or more hours on a bus and only about twenty minutes at each place. It was just mind-boggling to us - sure they had a picture to take home, but they hadn't really experienced any of the castle.

"Nothing drives Chinese tourism quite like British detective shows from 1987." Okay, but have you seen how much Japan loves Columbo. It's actually impressive.

Similarly, Japanese tourists flock to Howarth, due to Wutherin Heights as well given it is, as I understand it, mandatory reading in Japanese schools, even to this day there's times when there's busloads of Japanese tourists. The funniest one to me was when I was eating sweets out o a bag and the tour guide asked me what I was eating, I told them and where they could get some. Apparently I'd sent a whole tour into that sweet shop to get whatever it was. I often wonder what the poor sweet shop workers thought getting 40-50 Japanese tourists in there being excited to be in Howarth (to be fair it is beautiful), I might have introduced a busload of Japanese tourists to the joys of Werther's Originals. Which is funnier than it should ever be. Also, it's the same with tourists in New Zealand's tallest street too going everywhere/taking photos too

I'm impressed by Sam's sleuthing. I remember reading this story on the BBC and couldn't remember if they came to any conclusions, other than, it was a 'typical' English town. Makes perfect sense to anyone who has ever taken a tour group anywhere. You need to be very strict with timings and instructions or you might just lose one or two!

I thought this was some sort of joke at first, but no. HAI has just uploaded a video about the village that I live in...

The most impressive thing about this video is pronouncing Bicester correctly

It's not shown in the video but Kidlington is also a suburb of Oxford. I'm surprised it was only tourists from Bicester village doing this and not the ones from the city as well.

I was working in Kidlington while this happened and a college of mine (who lived in the village) once found a Chinese lady taking a picture of him through his window while he was eating his breakfast.

Casually HAI makes a video of the village just up the road from where I grew up. The smart Chinese tourist can get to Kidlington to Blenheim palace by taking the 7 or 500 busses to Woodstock. The train station in Kidlington, Oxford parkway, has a regular service to Bicester village, and it's like £3 one way, and these busses stop at the train station. Chinese tourism stonks

Bruh, I used to live two villages down from kidlington and went to the school near Blenheim palace. We had to walk around it on several occasions for PE and always saw those Chinese tourists during the summer months. One even came up and asked me what all us kids were doing here. Never thought anything of it until this video.

Now I want to go to Kidlington to see the local Chinese tourists. Metatourism.

The third biggest attraction for Chinese tourists in the UK, after Buckingham Palace and that shopping village, is Cambridge. Apparently a Chinese scholar-poet visited the West about a hundred years ago, spent some tine here, and wrote a poem about the place that became a classic. So now we have a bunch of fairly authentic budget Chinese cafes.

Every time i hear about Chinese tourism i immediately think of the time an entire tour bus of Chinese tourists took photos (on iPads, of all f*cking things) of me and my girlfriend walking down the street in DC. I got the feeling we were the first goth/punks they had ever seen. I don't even live in DC, we were just there for the cherry blossom festival. It was surreal.

I would love a bit about an Austrian town that the Chinese actually rebuilt in China. It’s called Hallstatt.

2:46 a kettle should be standard in every hotel room everywhere, how else am I supposed to make a brew at 3am?

I grew up in Upland, California and we had a time while I was in high school that - for unknown reasons - a Japanese tour company had decided it would become a stop for their tour buses. So every Thursday night, we would get busloads of (mostly elderly) Japanese tourists wandering around our quant little downtown during the weekly farmers market/street fair. Being a silly teenager with silly teenage friends, we loved posing for pictures when the tourists would ask. This only went on from about 1.5-2 years and became a fun part of the street fair. But just as mysteriously as the buses started to appear, they stopped coming. The tourists seemed to enjoy it and I know the street vendors and shops did, so I'm not sure why it ended, but it was fun while it lasted.

Could you please make a video on how the story of Vulcan, West Virginia and how in the 70s the Soviet Union and East Germany nearly built a bridge there? It started off as the small village wanted a bridge that crossed the Tug Fork river, since they used to have a foot bridge that collapsed, and when both West Virginia, Kentucky and the federal government ignored them, the local mayor asked the Soviet embassy and East German officials to help build a bridge: the Soviets even sent a journalist there, and West Virginia immediatly promised and built a bridge so that the Soviets won't build one. It's a pretty intersting story, and it was major news at the time.

As a local to Kidlington, what is wilder than having all the Chinese tourists come round is having a video made about it years later. As some one who has never been, how did you decide to talk about this?

When my friends Peter and Ninka decided to get married after living together for 20 years Peter, being Scottish, wore his kilt as did the best man. This is in southern Tasmania mind. The ceremony was held on the river bank adjacent to a wooden boat building shed where Peter works. Anywho, a bunch of Korean tourists pulled up and I managed to persuade them that men wearing a dress on their wedding day was a fine old Australian tradition.

I live in China and it is very common for tourists to just take pictures of things. It is to show off that you went somewhere and that you got a picture to prove it. Nevermind if you enjoyed it or not. China's rising middle class has allowed many people to travel for the first time. Blond hair, European lifestyles, and odd little things like suburbs are unique to Chinese people. In China, there are many foreign hot spots and restaurants. I have seen Chinese people buy food/drinks, take photos of it, and immediately throw it away. I have been in western bars and restaurants and Chinese girls will gather in a corner, buy something vaguely foreign looking, and larger portions of Chinese food. Snap a couple photos of the foreign looking food, and avoid anyone who isn't Chinese. Also they have a tendency to treat foreigners like amusement characters and oddities. My European looking friends will get sneaky photos of them taken by Chinese people. Many of Chinese will openly gossip in front of us (assuming we don't understand Chinese).

This reminded me of one time my family was on a vacation to Oxford in England and suddenly out of nowhere a group of (probably) Chinese tourists showed up and for some reason they absolutely head over heels for my at the time 11 year old younger sibling. Like all of them wanted to take selfies with my sibling and it was like my sibling was some kind of celebrity, the group were gushing about my younger sibling and stuff. None of us had any idea what were happening because none of us spoke Chinese or Japanese or Korean or whatever they spoke and the group seemingly didn't speak English or if they did they didn't feel the need to explain what was up. They were gone as quickly as they had arrived and we were all just kinda baffled wondering why in the world my younger sibling was so remarkable because like they didn't care about any of the rest of us. Like we're just from Denmark and my younger sibling just has brown hair eyes there's nothing really extraordinary about them, it's remained a complete mystery ever since.

Being a local to Bicester, I think I should tell you that Bicester village has a massive amount of Chinese tourists so much so that among us who live there all Bicester village is known for is Lots of Asian tourists, Overly priced shops and a really busy train station. Most of the tourists come from abroad or from students at Oxford university. Bicester itself isn’t that great of a town and is quite dingy. I have never heard of this story but I’m not surprised it happened.

There was some time, when always a few asian tourists ran thru my german village and they were taking so many selfies... Since my hometown was like 1000 other german villages, this was always really akward. They took photos of our local grocery store, city hall and even street signs... Only thing they din't took photos off was the historic - and really nice looking - old church (from 1271).

Ok, the excitement of the tourists running amok like toddlers without adult supervision is weirdly adorable. Regardless of any misguided ideas they might have, I love that they wanted to experience the real culture of the country. Their heart is in the right place. It's like people who might go to East Asia and want to tour the rural villages, but then not really know how to communicate. I'd totally go excitedly take photos of what the locals see as perfectly average houses and rice paddies. Let's be real.

When a selfie spot becomes trendy on Chinese social, it booms, like way more than the equivalent on Instagram. I've been living in China for a while now and this phenomenon is like selfie culture but on steroids, it's a bit much sometimes lol. Also, there's no such thing as asking permission to go on someone's property to take a picture or asking permission before taking someone's picture in the culture here, so it can become a bit invasive. It's not uncommon to have to be insistent in telling someone to not take pictures of you and having to repeat it multiple time before they actually stop doing it. Apart from that, a fun place to live :)

I should probably point out the situation in Bibury, which is nearby to Kidlington. The Emperor Hirohito stayed in one of the houses in the village, and every year they come in coach loads to the village (I visited in 2021 for a birthday and talked to the locals about why so many tourist were in the village, to which they said that this was nothing to 2019). There are signs in Japanese to stay off grass and properties. For the middle of a Gloucestershire village, it is very peculiar…

As an (ex) local I'd add a couple of points. You've oversold kidlington which is what makes it even funnier. Its barely a village, its mostly a suburb of Oxford. Think cookie cutter houses with rows of trash cans. And tourists walking on peoples front yards to take photos with their trash cans. Its odd. As.for visiting Bicester/Blenheim, there is an established tourist day trip from London to visit these places, Oxford, and the Cotswolds. The thing you missed about bicester village thats awesome is that train announcements (on the train from London) is also in Mandarin and Arabic, possibly(?) the only train route with non English or Welsh announcements in the UK.

I feel so seen, I used to live in Kidlington and I remember this happening when I was in high school! Everyone was so confused and the tourists were actually all really nice, I clearly remember them sitting around our school making sketches of the landscape!

I was once walking home from work in Chester, a very historic city in England, and encountered some Chinese tourists taking pictures of some town houses and apartments in the city that were built in the 90s. Still baffled to this day.

We went to Budapest a while back, got on the wrong bus and had a 45 minute tour of the suburbs. We quite enjoyed it. This is much the same I suppose.

There really is something to be said about the draw of "authentic" vignettes of a certain country. I went to college in a college town in the Midwest and a lot of my foreign exchange student friends would insist on stopping and taking pictures in front of the most mundane streets. When I asked, they explained that those were the types of streets they would see in American movies. Kidlington seems like the same thing, just English Village as opposed to American Suburbia. Honestly, as a tourist I'd rather visit a small village rather than a guided tour of a castle.

There is one missing part of information. The guided tour only is a requirement for residents of small places in china. Residents of Tier 1 cities can travel freely on their own. And I think there are places that Tier 2 residents can go solo as well. Hence why a lot of those tour groups are so surprised by many western things and behave sometimes poorly, they are mostly villagers first time abroad. Someone from Shanghai, or Beijing, wouldnt be too surprised by much in the west hehe

My first thought was that perhaps "Kidlington" means something else in one of the Chinese languages. But the idea of a travelling agency just dropping people off in a town to keep them away from the birthplace of a local drunkard is certainly far more amusing to me.

Even if HAI doesnt mention here, I loved Jet Lag. Recommend it to everyone who watches HAI

I've never really noticed how a lot of videos out there are pure stock footage, and were really just listening to an audio book. Really impressive it keeps me watching atleast

Chinese tourists: mom, can we get the British experience? Chinese tour company: no, we have the British experience at home The British experience at home:

0:35 Never thought that Half as Interesting would be confused by... A lock. It's just for canals to go up/downhill. You basically close both ends with the gates and then either fill it with water from the high end of the canal or drain it of water into the low end depending on which way you're going so that the water level inside the lock matches the water level of the direction you're going. The reason it's so narrow and long is because it's for barges. These were how we got cargo around the country before the advent of the railways. It's a lot easier to have a horse drag a boat of goods than a cart of goods.

lol that's so random. But when I travel, I'd like to see the "real" country on top of the popular spots. Seeing random towns and places is cool.

This is the nearest HAI has gotten to discussing my town lmao I live in Bicester and yeah, we know about the Chinese tourism explosion lmao BV has become one of the most important and lucrative locations in the country, and it's almost never visited by locals: it's just some retail fashion outlets 'knocking down' prices on items that are still way too expensive, and some equally expensive chain cafés. There are basically two reasons a local will go there: either a) they work there or b) they're meeting or accompanying a tourist, Chinese or otherwise. We already have an extortionate number of coffee chains in town, we don't go to BV to use one of the even more pricey ones, plus with the cost of living being nearly unbearable for anyone except Jeff Bezos, we're pretty unlikely to pop over for a casual Giorgio Armani or Polo Ralph Lauren shopping spree.

You missed the phenomenon of said Chinese tourists incessantly taking photos with the bog-standard green wheelie bins in Kidlington. Also, kudos for pronouncing ‘Bicester’ correctly!

so it’s a random stop for the convenience of the tourism company…I ran into a bus of Chinese tourist in the absolutely middle of nowhere in Norway on a plateau and they took many pictures of the icy lake. I found it amusing as a Chinese myself.

I worked in Bicester in 2007 and Kidlington had just started to become a popular tourist destination for the Chinese back then. My boss who lived there couldn't care less but his wife was very perplexed by the whole situation, and had tried to find out why she would get groups of Chinese tourists in her garden every day.

Once Chinese group visited The Ethnographic Open-Air Museum of Latvia but once they saw - Aegopodium podagraria, commonly called ground elder growing nearby they all started to gather it lol and lost interest in the old ways we Latvians lived lol! And another time the Japanese visited one of our cities - a friendship exchange program, the city mayor offered anything they wanted as a gift but they didn't want anything until saw an old groundwater pump in the city pretty common thing in the countryside of cemeteries for us!

Thank you for this, they also used to do the same thing in a town called Banbury (also close to Bicester) and I always wondered why there were multiple bus loads of Chinese tourists going around a small town.

I used to live within a few miles of Bicester Village and can confirm, you do get a lot of chinese tourists. They built a rail line with station a few years ago specifically for the village which gave the tourists a direct travel from London. That line has a stop just outside Kidlington for a park and ride into Oxford, could also explain the influx as 2016 was the year the new line opened.

This happened to my town once in NY for a year. It was flooded with Chinese tourist and tourist buses dropping people off at the village and mall. We had no idea why we become such a tourist hot spot, still don’t.

That "whatever this is" is a lock, it raises the level of water from one height to another on British canals. Its useful for raising and lowering canal boats in order to traverse the varying levels in our victorian era canal system. They also are apparently fun to fill to brimming and then open the gate to the lower half according to the kids near me.

Tbf, as someone who lives in england, I always recommend tourists go out and see the English countryside. As fun as London is, I believe you’re missing out on some very pretty villages and lovely scenery. Hats off to them for seeing kidlington

My god, BICESTER?! I used to live there. I remember when that mall was one roofed-over street with a bend in it, called Crown Walk. I used to go to the newsagent's there to read the magazines. then I went to the guitar store to drool over the hollowbody electrics.... How far they have come...

Kidlington residents here! Would never ever think that this village would make it to a Half as Interesting video haha

I lived in Kidlington back in the 1980's and still have family there. The only distinction was that it is about 4 miles from Oxford and it is the largest village in England. Based on population it should be a town, but the council refused to designate it as such because they wanted the record. Also, Richard Branson has a nice house there.

My fiancee and I lived at his mom's house for a few months after moving to the city he grew up in. Her house was on the historic registry, and it was listed on some self-guided walking tour thing. It was SO weird having tourists taking photos while I was just trying to run to the car in my pajamas in the morning. People would constantly park their car in the driveway and just stroll through the gate and walk up the stairs to the house like it was open to the public.

They're also rude, sometimes. When my friends and I were in at the Palace of Versailles, i had one of their chinese tour guides try to have 40+ chinese tourist cut in front of me because their tour guide was already in the line. they basically gave me the stink eye for getting mad at them, before letting my friends and i go in front of them. it probably also doesn't help that i'm ethnically chinese but I'm from the USA

I wonder which group had the best time - the ones who went to Blenheim Palace or the ones who got to mow a stranger's lawn?

No. Chinese tourists are not forced to take guided group trips. Chinese citizens have the freedom to travel on their own. Chinese tourists take those guided trips because: 1. Many Chinese tourists don't speak English very well and with a guided tour there is less trouble. 2. Sometimes these guided tour is also a bargain.

Soft power. It's amusing that they're fascinated by seemingly mundane stuff, but it's quite normal I think. I'm interested in regular Chinese streetscapes, the kind that aren't flashy and don't make for viral content

I remember hearing about this mystery a few years ago, so it’s nice to hear a follow up and get some resolution.

In my hometown in Switzerland we had a similar phenomenon - my hometown is quite famous for it's 2-storied open-top cable car, so a lot of chinese tour buses travel here. The people that don't go up on the mountain just end up walking around. They've randomly appeared in my garden before as well.

Really just hit the randomize teleport button

When I went to the Lake District on a little domestic tour of my own country, I couldn't count how many Chinese tourists were there it was insane! 😂 one was taking photos on a laptop!?

That third image is a canal lock by the looks of it which allows canal boats to incrementally rise to match the terrain.

As a traveller Ive often travel to places and became wowed by a sight or relic and even shed tears to the bizarreness of locals. When you often see a place or landscape or scenery but I had to travel miles then you will understand why I take photos and get emotional. To me it is not a tomb or village or gravestone or moutain but something beautiful and personal. I think this story is cute. More travel and less conflict

Lol I remember that and I live here. Basically one day my mother was downstairs in the kitchen and she screamed. I came running downstairs and saw some people peaking in through the windows. I went out and spoke to them and they were very polite and nice, apparently they were tourists and they had never seen old style English houses before. They said they didn't have anything like it in China. They asked to come inside and see my house so I showed them and that was that so I thought. The next day more people turned up, they were all up and down the town taking pictures, posing outside people's houses etc. After the fifth or sixth day the towns people got upset and complained to the council who went and complained to the Chinese tourist company. What had happened was that the Chinese tourist company had told their customers that they could come and tour an old style British town, the thing was they didnt ask permission and arrived in a coach one day and just dropped them off for the morning. After the council complained the tourist company stopped coming here but I believe they still offer tours like these in further away towns.

I used to drive tour bus to the Canadian Rocky Mountains, with mostly Chinese tourists and HAI is right. The tour company would charge the guests over double the rate for such attractions. They seem to think absolutely no one can read the English sign including the prices. Some tourists would go to the same restaurant, get a better meal and still save money. Some tour guides also dislike their guests talking to the driver, since we may just tell them the real costs. Although I have retired from it, for now. If anyone likes driving, isn't shy, and likes seeing some amazing scenery but never stopping long enough to enjoy it. It can be an amazing job. If the Chinese tourists like you, you can make some decent tips. There are some Nationalities that just don't tip, such as Norway, so don't count on them paying your mortgage.

“Experience the true sense of this country” actually makes a lot of sense. You’re can’t find that in London

Fun fact - the train to Bicester village announces that station in Mandarin (as well as Spanish & English), but all other stations are just announced in English. Also Blenheim Palace is worth a visit if you’re in the area, beautiful place

fun fact, there is a secret entrance to blenheim palace open to locals to go in for free

Back when I used to live in Milan, just before Covid struck, I would sometimes go to my favorite outlet store that sold some decent clothing at factory prices. Then one day, when I had friends visiting over, I suggested they go to that store. When they did, they came back and told me it had permanently closed, because, as the store owners had explained to them, just a day before that, two busloads of Chinese tourists came over and bought out their WHOLE stock of clothing (and it was a 3-floor store). Then they probably went to eat at the local Chinatown, which was just a 5 minute walk away.

The moment you mentioned tourist hotspot, I immeadiately thought of my home city Salzburg and the moment after, the video featured stock footage of chinese tourist in....my home city Salzburg!!!

No matter how interesting or non interesting the video subject your dry humour is always on point ! Thank you

Still doesn't explain why they want to mow the lawns

OMG you pronounced Bicester right!! That's incredible, well done! However, pret a manger is not fake French food! It's primarily coffee and sandwiches with a French company name they bought from a previous failed business.

I used to work in a greenhouse that would occasionally have Chinese tourists come through. I have no idea why, it was literally just a place where plants grew before being shipped off to Walmart. Would've made more sense to tour Walmart, but whatever.

I grew up in a place with lots of hilly places, greenery, etc. And when I went outside this place for the first time, I was fascinated by the flat lands, you could just look out of the bus window and see kilometres away, all the way into to horizon, I had never experienced such thing before, I was just in awe. And I liked the city life, everything you want, right where you live? It's awesome. Middle of the night and feel like eating something, there's a shop open somewhere in the city, it's awesome. And I would see tourists coming to see our hilly terrain and greenery, and couldn't understand why they like it. It's just trees and difficult hills. What's exciting about it? Why do they take pictures of random trees? And eventually I moved there for college, and loved there for almost a decade. Now I know why. Because they lived in that flatland all their life. A small hill is a wonder to them. So a huge hill like we have here is a fascinating thing for them. And they live in a dry climate, without much greenery, and trees. So the greenery and trees here is fascinating to them. And they lived in a city and got tired of it, they like getting away from it all. And enjoying the nature. 10-15 years ago, that was a puzzle for me...

0:36 is called a "lock". It's used to change the elevation of a canal so that it can go up and down hills. Also, this isn't unique to Kidlington. Whenever I go to Bowness in the Lake District, its full of Chinese.

1:52 has me dead. I hope Sam is ready for the audit

At first I thought this was going to be the same situation as Halstatt, the Austrian city that has a copy made of it in China, and that the tourism was being driven by people wanting to see the original city.

Ohhhh, for once I don’t even have a guess why this is. The best kind of HAI video! :D

"Whatever this is" - It is a canal lock

"Nothing says freedom quite like chaperoned field trips with government permission slips" And this this is still how international (or in some cases, intranational) tourism works in most of the Western world

In Sydney the University of Sydney Quadrangle is a Chinese Tourist Hotspot as the University of Sydney Quadrangle is marketed by Chinese Tour Companies as the filming site for Hogwarts in Harry Potter however it wasn't.

There's a river near me that's always got loads of Chinese tourists there (literally always, except the winter). But they come there in pairs and very small groups on public busses so it's not a tour group thing. I've long wondered why, so this video was really interesting. I don't know where they come from or where they go afterwards, because it's not like there's loads of Chinese people anywhere else near it. It only seemed to start in the last 5 or so years. Kinda cool quirk about the place, I'm glad it's popular.

Funnily enough, I have just spent the last 2 weeks walking around the entirety of Oxfordshire so before watching this video, as a self proclaimed expert on the county, I'll guess the reason is either Oxford airport or Oxford parkway station is right next door to Kidlington but the tourists thought they got off at Oxford itself. Ok I was wrong but I think I had a good theory.

The beach near me has busloads of Chinese tourists every Wednesday, who all take pictures of the little dolphin statue, and do the hot-chippy-seagull thing. I think it's quite charming - they squeal and get excited as if they just invented seagulls!

I’m amazed I’ve been watching these videos (almost) nonstop for the past week or so, and I still don’t think I’ve come even close to watching them all

Scarborough is a favourite with the Chinese too. There is a thing where they go to a fish restaurant and order about half of all the stuff on the menu for the "Authentic British Fish and Chip (and Oyster, and Crab, and Lobster......) Experience."

Funny seeing a HAI video about a place that's like 20 minutes away. I remember this well. The most bizarre part about it was the fact that Kidlington is just such an unremarkable and boring town, and generally considered a bit of a "s***hole" by the rest of Oxfordshire.

I'm so old I remember when we talked about tourusts from Japan and how they took pictures of everything and didn't understand directions.

Well done on the correct pronunciation of Bicester ( Bister ) only recently learnt from Dominic Chinea myself on his RU-vid channel.

That 8 miles from Kidlington to Bicester Village (A34) can be one of the most frustrating stretches of road to drive on when it comes to traffic. I travel to Oxford regularly from the Warwickshire and I try avoid that stretch of road when I can by taking the scenic routes through the Cotwolds.