The Whole World Knows China Is on Holiday, From Sydney to the Dolomites

Chinese travelers who went overseas for this year's long autumn break have made an awkward discovery: the crowds they left behind came with them.

A hashtag that translates as "The whole world knows Chinese people are on holiday" topped Weibo's trending list on October 2, as travelers swapped stories of hearing Mandarin on Australian beaches, Italian trains and in London restaurants.

The calendar helped. The Mid-Autumn Festival break ran from September 25 to 27 and the National Day holiday runs from October 1 to 7, so anyone who took the three working days in between off could stretch a trip to 13 days.

In Australia, a man surnamed Wang, who works in tourism and has lived in the country for years, told Jimu News that a video he filmed on September 28 showed a seaside boardwalk packed with sightseers, most of them from China. At popular attractions, he estimated, as many as nine in 10 visitors were Chinese.

"The locals are stunned," Wang said. Foreigners, he joked, seemed no more common there than on Shanghai's Bund: "Apart from the staff, everyone is a compatriot."

Other Chinese tourists told the outlet the scene was much the same at attractions and train stations in Sydney and Melbourne, where they could follow every conversation around them.

In Italy, Aqiduo, a 28-year-old from Shanghai, was on a train from Florence to Rome when Beijing News Radio reached her on the afternoon of October 2.

"There have been so many Chinese tourists along the way, too many," she said. "It feels as if I never left the country."

She set off on September 27 for Venice, the Dolomites, Florence and Rome, a route she had assumed would be quieter. "I figured not many people would go to the Dolomites," she said. Yet when she said hello to other Asian travelers there, nearly all of them turned out to be from China.

Leaving early did not help either. Xiaoshi, 28, from Guangdong Province, took leave and flew from Guangzhou to London on September 22. "I thought traveling off-peak would mean fewer people," she said.

Instead, at almost every restaurant recommended on social media, she ran into fellow Chinese diners who had followed the same online guides and ordered the same dishes. A three-day tour of the Scottish Highlands brought more Mandarin-speaking company, the radio station reported.