Respecting the Basic Humanity of Asian Tourists

A year ago, I was an “Asian tourist” on Harvard's campus. “Stand there in front of the statue, let’s get a picture,” my mother called loudly in Mandarin. “And then you can ask that girl to take a picture of our whole family.” Behind us, families and tour groups chattered impatiently, waiting for their turn.

Now, a year later, I’m a Harvard student, newly initiated into a culture of contempt for tourists—and “Asian tourists” in particular. Beside the tradition of urinating on the internationally revered statue foot, Harvard students reserve an especially derisive tone for the broad category of “Asian tourists,” which can include both travel groups directly from Japan and China, as well as Asian-American families like mine. Common characteristics reserved for the archetypal “Asian tourist” include snapping seemingly gratuitous pictures with expensive cameras in front of every building, standing in the middle of every path we need to walk on, and speaking loudly in languages other than English. In the Harvard student community, a norm has emerged of vicious mockery and disdain for “Asian tourists,” ranging from imitation of Asian accents in everyday conversation to deliberate sabotaging of photography attempts.

This culture of contempt hurts me, because I know that not so long ago, my family was part of that mercilessly mocked demographic. My mother may have been the stereotypical Asian tourist—but she too deserves basic respect.

In the few months that I’ve been on campus so far, I’ve heard a myriad of both legitimate and trivial complaints about Asian tourists, and even some comments that border on downright racism. Freshmen in particular circulate stories about visitors peeking into windows in the early morning and taking pictures on the steps in the afternoon. “Wake up in the morning and I swear the entire continent of Asia has been transplanted to my yard,” one student wrote on social media. Harvard boasts a daily stream of both domestic and international tourists hailing from all over the world, yet the “Asian tourist” demographic is reserved a special form of vitriol.

Some of the perceived rudeness arises from cultural misunderstandings. Cultural norms about privacy, speaking volume, and appropriateness of photography vary widely from country to country. Travelers from countries like China, where globalization has only recently made international travel affordable for the middle class, may simply be uninformed about American etiquette. Because overseas travel is a new luxury, what we perceive as rudely speaking too loudly or poking into off-limit spaces might simply be chalked up to cultural differences. First-time visitors to any location are often simply unaware of cultural norms that they are inadvertently breaking. Anyone who has traveled abroad can surely empathize with the experience.

Other behaviors, such as the simple desire to walk around and take pictures, come from pure admiration and our prestige as an international institution. As students, jaded to the glamor of Harvard, focused only on our next problem set, it’s hard to understand why a large group of visitors is chattering enthusiastically outside our yard at seven o’clock in the morning. Yet in her 2009 column, “Touring the Ivory Tower,” Crimson columnist Silpa Kovvali ’10 described how we should consider Harvard from the lens of an outsider. “In the international community,” Kovvali wrote, Harvard is “not just another name in a pile of applications or another campus to visit. It is a beacon of educational excellence and a pinnacle of achievement, and it’s no surprise that the occasional tour group wants to admire its buildings, and sometimes its students.” The prestige that drew these tourists is the same world-class reputation that we benefit from every day in our wealth of classes, resources, and renowned faculty.

Of course, a few complaints from students about the invasiveness of prying tourist eyes have their grounds. When strangers peer into our first floor dorm rooms, point at our furniture, and exclaim, “Look, a bed,” we feel, as many students put it, “like animals in a zoo”—dehumanized and disrespected. Openly gawking in our private dorm spaces is a legitimate intrusion into our space. Although the tourists might not be ill intentioned, we are upset by their failure to respect our basic humanity.

But in our relentless derision and contempt, are we not failing to respect theirs?

As a school that prides itself on diversity, acceptance, and cross-cultural understanding, we can do better. Next time we see a large group of Asian tourists, wielding iPads and Nikons, taking turns taking pictures in front of the John Harvard statue, try to think of them as people. People with genuine admiration for our school. People from a different cultural context with some understandable cultural misunderstandings. People who deserve respect for their basic humanity.

One of them just might be my mom.

YingYing Shang ’17 is a Crimson editorial comper in Canaday Hall.