More than 6,000 tourists arrived in Los Angeles last week as part of the 'biggest Chinese tour group in US history', SCMP reports.
It took 70 planes to transport all the visitors, who are employees of Guangdong-based direct-selling firm Perfect (China) Company. The Malaysian-funded company is known for rewarding its Chinese workers with free holidays.
The first group that arrived on Wednesday were taken on a shopping spree at South Coast Plaza, a shopping mall in Costa Mesa.
“We served 34 vans of Chinese tourists today,” the plaza posted on Sina Weibo, with pictures showing the local retail giant rolling out the red carpet for mainlanders and sending senior staff to greet them.
All 6,000 guests will be divided into hundreds of smaller tour groups with different focuses, such as shopping and sight-seeing, according to a spokesman for China International Travel Service (CITS), which planned the trip for Perfect.
“It marks the largest Chinese tour group to the States,” said Sunny Wang, spokesperson of Brand USA, a non-profit which promotes tourism to America.
Chinese tourists have often been criticised for their behaviour overseas (in a manner reminiscent of that which greeted Americans when they first started travelling abroad). Xinhua recently published a guide to behaving oneself when visiting Hong Kong after a number of incidents between locals and mainland visitors.
[Image via Weibo]
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