Cash or WeChat?

China's insatiable appetite for foreign travel

What would the world's tourist industry do without the Chinese?

IT IS SAID to be the second-most-popular destination for Chinese visitors to Britain after Buckingham Palace, yet Liu Xiaoming, China's ambassador to the country since 2009, jokes that he has refused invitations to take part in tree-planting ceremonies there. The attraction is Bicester, a town in Oxfordshire of little note for tourists except for its shopping centre, called Bicester Village (pictured). It is a kilometre-long strip of more than 160 clapboard outlets* selling luxury brands at a discount: Boss, Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo, Versace and many more.

注：比斯特购物村(Bicester Village)，位于英国牛津市附近的比斯特镇，是英国人气最火的Outlet，是游客在伦敦城外购物的首选之地。每年吸引大量来自全球的时尚奢侈品追求者来此观光购物。比斯特购物村折扣形式吸引人群，而且打折的对象都是世界顶级大牌，比如Prada、Gucci、D&G等上百个世界名牌。(百度百科)

*outlet

1）a shop that is one of many owned by a particular company and that sells the goods that the company has produced 零售网点；经销点；专卖店

2）a shop/store that sells goods of a particular make at reduced prices（某品牌的）折扣店

*outlet mall：a large group of shops, usually outside a town or city, that each sell clothes, goods, etc. made by a particular company, for a reduced price （通常坐落在市郊的）购物中心，廉价商品销售中心

*中文里通常说的“奥特莱斯”就是outlets的音译。在零售商业中专指由销售名牌过季、下架、断码商品的商店组成的购物中心，因此也称为“品牌直销购物中心”。

Mr Liu's excuse for not visiting Bicester, as he informed a think-tank audience in 2011, is that “China is a developing country” and it would not be right for him as its ambassador to promote the shopping mecca*. Still, last year the outlets received some 6.6m visitors, about the same as the British Museum, of whom about half were foreigners. Half of those were from China—including diplomats, in their unofficial capacity. Without China, Bicester would not be what it is today. As trains approach Bicester Village station, passengers are alerted in Mandarin.

*mecca：If you describe a place as a mecca or Mecca for a particular thing or activity, you mean that many people who are interested in it go there.众人向往的地方；圣地；胜地

A middle-aged Chinese bureaucrat on a week-long trip to Britain shows off several bags filled with shirts from Charles Tyrwhitt[查尔斯·蒂里特] and a jacket from Burberry[巴宝莉]. He says he has spent more than £1,000 ($1,400). Another Chinese visitor, a retired professor of art, has splashed out* over £200 on T-shirts from Boss. A woman from the central Chinese province of Hunan shows a couple of bottles of Estée Lauder[雅诗兰黛] skincare lotion that she picked up for £190—one for herself, another for a friend. They all say the goods they have bought are much cheaper than they would be in China, helped by a weak pound and rebates of value-added tax for foreign visitors.

*splash out (sth)：to spend a lot of money on buying things, especially things that are pleasant to have but that you do not need 花大笔的钱（尤指购买不需要的东西）；挥霍

They splashed out £3,000 on a holiday.

他们一次度假就花了3000英镑。

According to Global Blue[环球蓝联], a tax-free-shopping firm, Chinese visitors bought more than one-quarter of all the tax-free products sold in Britain last year. Their spending was up by nearly one-third on the year before. To make life easier for them, Bicester Village has recently introduced facilities to pay through WeChat, a Chinese social-media and payments platform. Chinese travellers abroad often grumble* about other countries' backwardness in electronic payments. Their own big cities are almost cashless.

*grumble：to complain about someone or something in an annoyed way 发牢骚，抱怨，嘟囔

She spent the evening grumbling to me about her job.

她一晚上都在向我抱怨她的工作。

Life's big luxuries

Economically, there is no doubt that the surging numbers of Chinese travellers abroad are changing the world. Most conspicuously, they are becoming the main props of luxury brands. McKinsey[麦肯锡], a consultancy, says Chinese people account for one-third of global spending on luxury goods. Between 2008 and 2016 they were responsible for three-quarters of the growth in such spending, the firm reckons. Much of this is done outside China, where prices are often lower than at home, but McKinsey says that even when prices are similar, nearly a third of Chinese shoppers still prefer to buy luxury items abroad. According to the UN's World Tourism Organisation, in 2016 they spent a total of more than $260bn, more than double the amount forked out* by Americans abroad and about one-fifth of all global spending by international tourists. Only a decade earlier Chinese tourist spending had accounted for a mere 3% of the world's total.

*fork out sth：to pay an amount of money, especially unwillingly （尤指不情愿地）付钱

The spending numbers for recent years should be treated with caution. Gavekal Dragonomics[龙洲经讯], a research company, says official figures may be misleading because they include people who are not strictly tourists. It reckons that spending by recreational travellers alone in 2015 may have been less than $175bn, about 30% lower than the official figure for spending by all kinds of travellers abroad.

But even if many of the Chinese visitors are not really tourists, they are certainly spending. And they are increasingly interested in buying not just goods but luxury experiences or costly adventures off the beaten track*. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Antarctica[南极洲], for example, is now second only to those from America. There were more than 5,100 of them in the tour season of 2016-17, up from just over 1,000 in 2011-12.

*off the beaten track：in a place where few people go, far from any main roads and towns 偏僻的，人迹罕至的

The farmhouse we stayed in was completely off the beaten track.

我们住的农舍非常偏僻。

And this is just the beginning. Less than 10% of Chinese currently hold passports, compared with more than 40% of Americans in 2017. By the end of this decade the number of passport-holders in China is expected to double to 240m, predicts Ctrip, a Chinese travel company.

For all its ratcheting up* of political controls at home, the Communist Party does not seem concerned about the effect of exposing so many of its people to freer societies abroad. Officials may calculate that Chinese rich enough to travel abroad are unlikely to be impressed by the achievements of democratic systems. Infrastructure in many Western countries is often shabbier than in China, homeless people abound in big cities and crime is a constant risk. “I went to New York and I thought, this isn't as good as Shanghai,” says a Chinese businessman.

*ratchet sth up/down：to increase/reduce something over a period of time 逐步增加／减少

The debate should ratchet up awareness of the problem among members of the general public.

这场辩论可以使普通百姓逐步认识这个问题。

China's one big worry about the surge of outbound travel is that it could damage its image. Holiday destinations hear plenty of complaints about the noisiness of Chinese tourists and their disregard of local customs. In Hong Kong, locals staged several protests against tourists from the Chinese mainland in 2014 and 2015. Partly in response, the number of mainland visitors to Hong Kong plummeted*. Officials often hand out leaflets at airports telling travellers how to behave in other countries.

*plummet：to fall very quickly and suddenly 暴跌，急剧下降

House prices have plummeted in recent months.

房价近几个月来暴跌。

Another fast-growing group of Chinese visitors abroad, students, are more alert to the social and political environment they find themselves in—but that does not necessarily make them appreciate liberal democracy.

This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline "Cash or WeChat?"

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