The News Lens international edition is sponsored by Tutor A B C

Japan recently announced the top 10 slangs of 2015, and the most popular one is the term “爆買" (the literal translation is, “explosive shopping”), describing the Chinese people’s shopping spree that has overwhelmed the Japanese.

Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, published a report on December 8, focusing on the gap between China and Taiwan regarding this phenomenon. The report points out that recently the Taiwanese tourists in Japan have been more quiet and low-key. Although both Taiwanese and Chinese tourists speak Chinese, the Taiwanese tourists will lower their volume in public to avoid being mistaken as Chinese people.

The report also mentions that the feeling of not wanting to be mistaken for Chinese people in the Taiwanese society has grown after the Ma-Xi meeting in Singapore.

Apple Daily reports, a 60-year-old Taiwanese couple traveling in Kansai with a tourist group says that they still spoke in Chinese when they first arrived in Japan. However, they started speaking less at tourist attractions, shopping malls, hotel lobbies and other public spaces. They would control their volume so that they are only audible to the people near them.

“We don’t want to be mistaken for Chinese people, otherwise it feels like we would be despised by the staff in souvenir shops. Once we noticed this, all the others in the tourist group behaved in the same manner," says the couple.

Not only do Taiwanese tourist groups do so, other Taiwanese solo travelers have become more low-key as well. A 70-year-old couple visiting their daughter who is studying in Nagoya says, “We visit Japan every year, but this year our daughter especially reminded us to refrain from speaking in Chinese as much as possible because of the surge of Chinese tourists this year."

SET reports, this report also analyzes that among all the foreigners who visited Japan last year, Taiwanese people were the most with 2.83 million people while China placed third with 2.41 million people. But there was a big reshuffle this year with China doubling its visitors to Japan to 4.28 million people, and Taiwan only at 3.11 million people.

Translated by Vic Chiang
Edited by Olivia Yang

Sources: