I recently read an article by Rong Xiaoqing in your paper that described how the US theaters increasingly aired Chinese movies and other cultural events given the growing size of the Chinese population there and struggled to cope with the brazen lack of manners among the Chinese audience. It caught my attention because a friend of mine working in Washington DC recently spent hours on a trip to a remote theater to watch the Chinese hit Mr. Six and also complained to me about some rude fellow countrymen.

I am very glad that my friend could see the movie at almost the same time as I did soon after it was released in China and exchange our views immediately rather than months later when she came back home. The expanding presence of Chinese around the globe has brought subtle and often positive changes to many places in the world, even the faraway US.

But some individual experiences may have been made worse. During a business trip in Thailand, while I idled in the bustling shopping malls and supermarkets in the business center of Bangkok, I kept hearing Putonghua and saw Chinese tourists bargaining with shopkeepers, making me wonder whether I was actually in China rather than Southeast Asia.

When I finished four days' trip and jumped on a shuttle bus in Suvarnabhumi Airport, my ears were assaulted by Chinese dialects and the lingering excitement of a foreign trip was instantly dampened as it felts like being on a domestic bus.

"So many Chinese in every famous resort, so noisy and tiresome," grumbled my aunt, who had recently came back from a trip to Thailand and had more memories of the crowds of Chinese rather than the beautiful scenery there.

The massive influx of Chinese tourists has certainly brought tons of business opportunities to other countries and luxury brands. Statistics show that China has been the largest source of tourists for three years now and the overall spending of Chinese in overseas can makes up about 11 percent of the world's tourist total.

However, Chinese people won't stop there. It is estimated that by 2020 Chinese people will make more than 200 million visits outbound each year and their consumption might triple. This may delight governments and businessmen. But the large crowds of Chinese people have already invited many complaints from locals in their destinations and they are mostly regarded as nouveau riche rather than pleasant peers, even by their own compatriots.

It may sound a little bit selfish, but I do hope that next time on an overseas trip, if big flocks of Chinese tourists are unavoidable, they can at least be good travel companions rather than a flock of squabbling birds.

Tan Su, an interpreter in Beijing