
Kidlington's mystery tourist influx continues to baffle locals - sjclemmy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-36733450
======
Doctor_Fegg
Speaking as a local, this genuinely is bizarre.

Three miles from Kidlington is Woodstock, which is a picture-perfect village
with stone cottages and quaint shops. Ten miles away (where I live) you're
into the genuine Cotswolds.

The theories advanced in the BBC article don't stack up. Kidlington is not a
"folksy cultural stop" or "a beautiful English village". It's really average
suburbia - the fact it's formally a "village" is just an administrative quirk,
it's not village-like in any way.

It's incredibly unlikely that people are "mistaking Kidlington for
Kirtlington" because the latter has a population of eight people and a dog,
nothing really to look at, and is less pretty than a hundred other villages
nearby.

And it's not "on the way to Bicester Village shopping centre"; you have to
take a detour to get there, and if you want to detour into a pretty village
between (say) Oxford and Bicester Village, there are prettier ones to visit.

~~~
rdtsc
Didn't catch in the article if it was mentioned, but has anyone thought of you
know, asking tourists why they picked to come there, or what they expect to
see? Guessing the implication they can't speak English very well?

I have seen a similar phenomenon when going to Jamaica. Our driver who was
supposed to take us from the airport to the hotel to the other side of the
island, happened to stop for a "break" at a road-side cafe with a shop full of
what looked like overpriced Chinese made handbags, clothes and some random
things. There was a woman working there who was probably his wife or relative.
The idea was to hopefully get the tourists to buy some of those things. We
stood there entirely too long, and he thought he was being sly but it was kind
of obvious what is happening.

So perhaps some pub owner or someone owning a business in the area somehow
managed to convince a tourist company to bring clients in that area? A busload
full of tourists is a nice captive audience who are already in a happy
spending mood, so not surprising if someone would capitalize on that.

~~~
yohui
> _Didn 't catch in the article if it was mentioned, but has anyone thought of
> you know, asking tourists why they picked to come there, or what they expect
> to see? Guessing the implication they can't speak English very well?_

Yes, that's exactly what the article said:

> _Michelle Young, who lives in The Moors, Kidlington, says they did try to
> solve the mystery._

> _" A neighbour did try to ask them where they were from but they didn't
> speak any English and we didn't get very far," she said._

------
houshuang
This was really frustrating to me, because it felt like treating the Chinese
visitors not as people, but a natural phenomenon (locusts) or some such. It's
natural that the locals would be baffled, and if this had been a short notice
in a local newspaper, then fine. But I read it in a Norwegian newspaper, and
later saw it on Metafilter, Hacker News etc. By that time, surely someone must
be able to talk to the visitors in Chinese, do a little bit of research with
tourist agencies from China etc?

I decided to see if I could find any Chinese sources writing about this, since
they might be more clued in. Sohu.com's article
([http://news.sohu.com/20160708/n458318443.shtml](http://news.sohu.com/20160708/n458318443.shtml))
says that the rumor was spread that this is where parts of Harry Potter (the
Dursleys) was filmed.

~~~
sjclemmy
That would make more sense. So it's actually much more sinister. The Dursley
abode is symbolic of all that is bad with the modern world. Bitter people,
living in a soulless landscape obsessed with meaningless possessions and
social status, devoid of compassion and love.

Is that what Kidlington is like? ;)

------
glup
Inevitable by-product of a highly networked society?

I saw a similar, though somewhat more interpretable, situation at Alamere
Falls (1.5 hrs north of SF, south end of Point Reyes): a thousand high school
students from all over the Bay Area out in a National Seashore where you
generally expect to see a hundred hikers tops, heavy on the retired profs in
Audobon t-shirts and NPR-steeped Marin mushroom enthusiasts. According to one
of the park guards, it is now like this all the time. The park guards get
asked all the time by the new visitors 'where is this?'as the visitors point
to an HDR, oversaturated picture on Snapchat or Instagram. And every weekend
new pictures are posted, and the next week another cohort comes.

------
olalonde
When I was traveling in rural parts of China, locals seemed equally baffled
that a _laowai_ was interested in their lowly village. Also, I assume most
Chinese who have money to travel abroad live in large cities where such single
family homes are quite a rare sight and sell in the millions of dollars. Now,
why that village more than another I have no idea.

~~~
mhink
I think this might be hinting towards the truth. An additional observation
might be the pursuit of _authenticity_ \- so many cities and tourist
destinations across the world seem to have become hyperreal versions of
themselves- in my own home city of Seattle, the Seattle Center park seems to
be a good example of this. Walking around near the Space Needle feels like
going to Disney World- monorail and all.

I mean, if I visited the U.K., and spent an entire week in London seeing all
the tourist attractions (I suppose for me that'd be Big Ben, Trafalgar Square,
London Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Abbey Road), what would I
really get out of that? I can see pictures of those things on the Internet any
time I want (and in Abbey Road's case, I can see live streaming _video_!)

~~~
stinkytaco
Off topic, but there's something I love about that webcam. It's that mix
between the cultural meme that's frozen in time (notably the album cover) and
its intersection with a real world place. Before I saw the video I guess it
never really occurred to me that it's a real street carrying real people and
real cars. It's obvious, but I had never given a thought to it as a real
place.

Plus it's funny to see cars zipping around that curve while people are at the
crosswalk. I can practically hear the frustration of the drivers who have to
stop and wait for a bunch of tourists staging a photo.

------
jonah
Has no one bothered to ask the visitors why they came?

~~~
codemac
I was kind of baffled by this too, does the BBC not have access to anyone that
speaks their language?

Also, the article switches between them being Japanese & Chinese tourists.. is
the BBC even sure where the tourists are from?

I'm unsure as to why this is on Hacker News.

~~~
DonaldFisk
Shortly after this story broke, I spoke to someone at Into Japan Specialist
Tours, who are actually based in Kidlington. They would have been informed if
the tourists were Japanese. The woman I spoke to doesn't think they're
Japanese, and are more likely Chinese, based on how they were dressed. Also,
it is not far from Bicester Village, a shopping centre popular with Chinese.

------
duncans
Oxford Parkway railway station
([https://goo.gl/maps/UKa1rz18pN92](https://goo.gl/maps/UKa1rz18pN92)) has
opened in the past 6 months which is practically in Kidlington and the stop
before the mentioned Bicester Village retail park as you travel from London
Marylebone. I suspect the tourists are thinking they can squeeze a little
Oxford visit on their way back to London, not realising that the dreaming
spires of Oxford city centre are a fair old way away from Oxford Parkway
station.

------
facepalm
My guess: there is an exact copy of Kidlington in China, and people who live
there want to see the original.

~~~
DonaldFisk
That isn't actually as far-fetched as it sounds. There's a Thames Town
([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/14/fake-english-
town-i...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/14/fake-english-town-in-
china_n_3907820.html)), a copy of the village of Halstatt in Austria
([http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hallstatt-
china](http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hallstatt-china)), and even a Paris
clone ([http://weburbanist.com/2013/09/07/paris-of-the-east-
abandone...](http://weburbanist.com/2013/09/07/paris-of-the-east-abandoned-
replica-ghost-city-in-china/)) in China.

------
sp332
I suspect some tour guide lied to them and told them the town was famous for
some historical reason. Like King Richard III was born here or something
crazy.

------
DonaldFisk
Here's a Facebook page on the phenomenon:
[https://www.facebook.com/SpottedKidlington/posts/12790505254...](https://www.facebook.com/SpottedKidlington/posts/1279050525453590)

And this is the Daily Mail article:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3676849/Residents-
ba...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3676849/Residents-baffled-
coachloads-Chinese-tourists-descend-unremarkable-Oxfordshire-village-ask-
selfies-told-used-HARRY-POTTER-films-rogue-tour-
operator.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490)

------
retube
Why doesn't a local just ask a few people why they're there?

