Ji Yang, Chinese, has studied in Canada since 2012 Answered May 14 Existing answers already gives fairly enough perspectives on explaining the OP’s question. I’d like to add a few more my opinions, just based on my observation from my friends and family. My mum said she really enjoys having some local cuisine when traveling, but, sometimes it is just hard for her to understand the menu, or knowing what exactly something on the menu is. BTW, my mum can speak English pretty fluent for daily life. Last summer, when she went to some European countries, she realized the local’s English is way worse than her… Also pointed out by my mum, when she traveled to some East Asian country, (with all our respects, I don’t talk about which countries they are), the food is just not clean enough to eat. Also, not all the local foods taste good to Chinese people. My mum has to carry some instant noodles (from China) with her during the travel. Chinese tourists often travel to other country by a group, lead by some tour guides, the group size is often larger than 10 people. If you’ve been some Chinese restaurant you can definitely see some big tables that left for large groups. This does not hold for most of western restaurants. Imagine you have a group of 16 Chinese people (very normal for a Chinese traveler group), and you have to allocate them into, say 4 small tables. Not a good idea, I believe.
Sheng Zhong Answered May 5 Bear in mind that China is a world, a world in parallel to the entire West. A Canadian traveler would be happy to try Spanish food in Spain, but that’s just like a traveler from Liaoning province trying local food in Guangxi province. Not a surprise at all. It is much less likely that a Canadian traveler would try local cuisine in Nigeria, because Nigeria is not part of her world. For the same reason, a Chinese traveler from Liaoning province might not want to try food in Venezuela. Sometimes, Western travelers do have an edge, because Western restaurants are readily available throughout the world, and because the local food everywhere is influenced by the Western food. If we take that into account, you might find Chinese travelers more open to “foreign” cuisines than many Western travelers.
Allen Ng Aug 13 Jerome: I think you said it quite well here concerning the dining culture of the Chinese tourists in the US. Very culturally defined that Chinese generally love to dine without restriction of freedom of expression. Generally they love to be themselves enjoying and expressing happiness and joy in dining with their family,, friends or groups of other tourists. This cultural behavior is well received by myself but sometimes is not well received by the others in the community especially the higher end (maka maka) communities who likes to dine in more quiet and less crowded atmospheres.
