China's eight-day holiday has arrived.
Woohoo!
It's going to send millions traveling in search of adventure.
Yet behind all of that excitement that everyone is feeling right now, of new sights and long flights, lies a quieter challenge.
For many, the real test is not the journey itself, but finding the right words in an unfamiliar tongue.
Will the trip be remembered for awkward silences and mismatched translations, or for the rare joy of connecting across cultures?
We're live from Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yushun and Yushan.
First on the program.
The golden eight-day holiday has finally arrived.
As millions of Chinese travelers get ready to explore the world, they've packed their bags, their cameras and, maybe for many, a healthy dose of language anxiety.
That's true.
While you might be dreaming of stunning selfies in front of the Eiffel Tower, the reality for a lot of people is a silent standoff with a baffled waiter or a panicked search for the nearest menu of your own country's food.
Why?
Why does the fear of making a linguistic blunder feel more intimidating than a 10-hour flight itself?
And as you prepare to cross oceans, will your biggest souvenir be a story about being hopelessly lost or a memory of a truly authentic?
We'll talk about it all.
But for this holiday, Yushan and Yushan, good afternoon to you both.
So this is one of the two big holidays here in China.
The other one's the Spring Festival holiday.
And we were having a chat before the show.
And you were telling me that during the Spring Festival holiday that's kind of the family obligation time thing.
You have to go back to your... The expectation is you go back to your hometown.
You spend time with your family.
But for this big holiday, it's the... do-whatever-you-want kind of holiday.
It's the kind of holiday that has a relatively longer span of time to allow you to, for example, travel outside of China or travel around with multiple itinerary destinations on your travel list.
So it's also a good time for family travels as well because parents and...
Kids are all on holiday.
Yeah, everybody's off together.
Everybody's off together so they can travel together.
Especially this year, because there is a coincidence that National Day holiday plus Mid-Autumn Festival's holiday and making this holiday as an eight-day long break.
Yeah, so typically on the calendar, this would not happen, right?
This is kind of a special year where they happen to match up with each other.
Yes.
So Chinese travelers began like searching for outbound accommodation as early as April.
A report from Airbnb China shows that between September 27th and October the 8th that's, people are searching the date that they were trying to book accommodations.
So search for these days for overseas days nearly doubled compared with the same period last year.
Right because yeah, the searches started in April, but they were searching the period of September 27th to October 8th.
That's that holiday period time.
And this year, there's something that's really inspiring to see.
That is, there's been a rise of, say, newer or niche destinations among Chinese travellers.
Previously, when we think about long holiday or not that long, but rather just an arrangeable holiday we probably think about traveling outside.
And cities like Paris and Milan and those iconic travel spots.
Europe's always a hot spot to travel for people in the Asian region because you can check off a lot of different boxes in a relatively short period of time.
But this year, something new here is that lesser known spots are booming and searches for austin, a small belgian city, rose more than 30 times year on year.
And crete at home, i'm pronouncing it, i think in greece, you mean yeah yeah yeah, crete in greece, it jumped over 10 times on searching records, while fukuoka and the itsu peninsula in japan saw increases of more than three-fold and two-fold respectively.
So this shows the trend towards decentralized destination choices among Chinese travelers, with many of them favoring just unique, offbeat places that offer standout highlights.
Yeah, because when you go to Japan, you might think oh well, Tokyo is going to be the number one spot that people go to, if not Osaka.
But Fukuoka, maybe not the most common choice, but this time around Japan.
It's proving to be a little bit more popular.
Yeah, Crete in Greece.
I'm not sure if that's usually the hot spot for people to go when they're in Greece.
But Austin, Belgium, that's a new town name, a new city name for me.
A new vocabulary for me too.
Yeah, that's kind of a cool little trend though, right?
People are searching the...
Maybe have to scroll down a little bit places for their destinations.
And also thanks to the launch of some new direct flights and the expansion of China's visa-free travel network, have boosted outbound demand, and searches for Greece, as we mentioned, skyrocketed sevenfold.
And cities in Vietnam surged nearly sevenfold, fueled by its visa-free policy that appeals to younger travelers.
And we can see like the age group from 25 to 29, especially young professionals traveling with friends, is driving outbound tourism's growth, and searches for group trips of two or more are the strongest among the demographic.
I'll say that has a lot to do with social media.
You know, like on Xiaohongshu, the red note, I personally I have a folder collecting everybody's posts regarding just unique spots on this very earth.
Oh, that's a really good idea.
Yeah, it's just rare visited spots on earth, like interesting country you've never, you've rarely heard of, or interesting places in um iconic like tourism country that fewer people go to.
I have one folder just for that on red note and there are tons and tons of just posts and another folder for the food you're going to eat.
That's for future Yushan and future Yushan, where you're going to go at some point, right?
There's also a trend, you know.
As I mentioned before, it's popular for people to go to Europe because they can check off so many boxes.
They can start in England, then head over to France, and then do Germany and Spain and Italy all in one trip.
But one of the trends too is that younger tourists are looking for slower travel, looking at different places around the world but staying in that one place, as opposed to multiple flights or multiple countries, which I guess there's advantages and disadvantages to both, I suppose.
Which style do you prefer?
Do you prefer to go to a place, go to a city, spend a couple of days there and then move on, or just really immerse yourself in that place for like a week or so?
That depends on how many times I'm going to go to this place.
If it's probably like once in a lifetime, I'm probably going to cherish all of the second that I can have.
So go to as many places as I can.
So I think slow pace is not my style.
In my case, it really depends on whom I'm traveling with.
If it's someone that I'm close to that I am designing the route for us traveling this time around.
Um, particularly then.
Yeah, staying at one place for a bit longer is totally on the list.
There are some photogenic spots that people are interested in as well.
Prague from the Czech Republic.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of my friends have been to Prague.
They absolutely loved it.
Yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful square.
You've been there before?
I've seen pictures.
Yeah.
I wish I'm there.
It's in your folder.
Also Queenstown, New Zealand is.
Even though it's not the peak season, apparently a lot of people are interested in heading that way as well.
But as I mentioned in the opening, a language barrier will stop people from being interested in a spot when it comes to traveling overseas.
And I wonder, that's kind of a thing for American people.
I'll share some statistics in a little while.
But I wonder, is that a thing for Chinese people, just generally speaking, being worried about not speaking the local language where you could consider traveling to?
Would that stop people from traveling somewhere?
Again, when we talk about Chinese tourists, it covers a big age gap, let's say if it's younger generation, I would say no, because most of us grow up learning English at least, and it gives us confidence in speaking english in another country most of the cases.
But another, more common, i would say, scenario might be like middle-aged travel groups from, from china covering, like um, seniors travel groups.
Who the tour, the tour groups?
The tour groups yeah, they perhaps that these um elders.
They perhaps don't speak the local language but they're traveling in the group and they're guided in a way um, That's language or communication guarantee that any communication needs arises.
There's going to be someone to help you either way.
Have you been on a tour group style vacation before?
Yeah, when I was younger, I think, me and my mom, we signed up for a trip in Turkey.
And I promise you I'm going to come back to Turkey sometime in the future, because it's such a beautiful place.
And from this I don't remember the English name of that sea, but from the sea, across the sea, you can see Greece from afar.
Yes, you're on this piece of land, this area on earth, and just enjoying the very distinctive local culture and food as well.
So yeah, that's one kind of experience that you can't miss in your life.
And also traveling with a group is very convenient in a way that we have one Chinese guide that speaks local language and one local guide that speaks English.
That's really convenient.
Yeah, that is why I want to mention that I've never been in...
Any of these tour groups, but especially for these elderly people, I think they're even more confident and they don't think it is a barrier when they don't even understand the language that local people speak.
In the tour group, of course.
And then of course, you've got the technology available these days that kind of makes everything stress free.
Absolutely.
And like apps like Google Translate or you have that kind of like handheld technology translators, they can translate everything instantly, just like you have a real translator.
Like you have your own personal tour guide there.
I've never used a handheld translator before.
In Beijing, when I travel around or different parts of China, I'll use... just the whatever.
I mean, I don't even use a specific app.
Sometimes I'll just go on the internet and search for a translator.
Sometimes I'll use an app, but there's just so many tools these days.
Do those handheld translators, do those work pretty well?
I guess they must, right?
According to my mom, yes.
Oh, she uses one?
Yeah, she got one when she was planning a solo trip to the UK to visit me back then when I was studying there.
And until she met me, she was all on her own.
And the only friend she's got was the translator she got at that.
You can literally record other people talking and it will broadcast in your own language.
So that's something she found really helpful back then.
And nowadays, with the I think we mentioned, like some really high tech gears coming up with a similar function, like the glasses.
Was it VR glasses?
Yeah.
Even help project language just on your glasses.
I looked up how those work.
So the wearable glasses, they perform the instant translation.
They have built-in microphones into the glasses.
So the microphones capture the language and then it's processed by the translation engine, the AI engine, which is often a smartphone app or something like that.
Or it could be the glasses onboard system as well.
But anyway, it generates that translated text on the lens in your field of vision.
I don't know how comfortable or convenient that would be.
And also that would only provide you with the listening part of the interaction, not the speaking part.
No.
What I saw was that it is really good for a lot of international students when they're having classes and having difficulties listening to lectures.
Yeah, it's like live subtitles for your life.
Yeah, that's true.
It might be bad for your eyes in the long run, but anyway, it's a good tool.
And, like we said, tech is changing the world now in terms of how people feel comfortable when they travel.
But it's always nice to prepare a few phrases before you go, right?
Like for I don't remember which country it was, but for several of us classmates while studying in the UK we were touring around a bit in nearby countries in Europe.
And each place, before we fly, before we land in there, we just prepare the necessary like greetings and also thank you, okay.
So, like maxi and and and um um, was it durian in french?
Yeah, durian is easy to remember because it sounds like durian.
Yeah just, i wasn't thinking like that stuff, like that, just some something to make you feel like it's easy to throw out when you are there and also it expresses your feeling to the local people when you're receiving help, for example.
We're asking for a toilet.
Yeah, anything that you can offer in the local language usually goes a pretty long way, right?
Other preparations that you can do, of course, you can download offline maps onto your phone.
That helps a lot because you never know what maps will work in the locations you're traveling to.
You can save some phrases or Study on the airplane, right?
If you have a long flight, learn some of the language on the airplane.
And then I always find this to be good travel advice as well.
Make a copy of your passport.
If something happens yeah, make a photocopy of your passport and keep it on your person when you're traveling outside in that place, because you just you never know.
Something might happen, you lose your ID or something like that.
So having that extra piece of ID is a good helpful tip when you're traveling around.
So.
Let's get to where I'm from, part of the world.
Americans and Canadians, of course, have passports.
Yes, but many do not.
In America, this is from the U.S.
State Department.
This is a stat from 2024 via CNN.
In America, just 48% of people hold a valid passport.
That means that more than half don't.
Canada, a little bit better, but it's not universal for sure.
About 67% of Canadians have a passport.
That's from a Canadian government website, again, from 2024.
But when you don't have that passport, it means that you're not traveling.
What do these statistics look like here in China?
Well, here in China also, from the official data, as of July 2025, Chinese citizens held more than 160 million valid ordinary passports.
And based on China's total population of about 14 billion.
If we have to transfer that to a percentage, then this represents a passport ownership rate of around 114.
And at present Chinese passport holders can travel visa-free or with visa on arrival to over 90 countries and regions worldwide.
So, given China's vast population I would say 160 million valid passport holding record is That number is going to be lower when you have a population size like that.
Still much to grow, but comparing with, say, decades ago is already an increase.
So, for those in North America that do hold a passport, the information about language anxiety and whether it stops people from traveling or not is what I want to talk about next.
And I found this to be really kind of surprising.
There was a survey recently done by Preply and it found that one in three Americans actively avoid international destinations where they would need to speak English, another language.
32 deliberately choose English-speaking countries like the UK or Ireland or Australia, and they do that to avoid communication issues.
And they also do that because those are beautiful places to visit as well.
According to the survey results, these are some of the top reasons that people avoid foreign languages.
One was it feels too difficult to learn.
Two, I don't have the time.
And three, I'm afraid of offending locals with mistakes.
I understand number one and number two, difficult to learn and don't have the time.
But how do you feel about that?
I'm afraid of offending locals with mistakes.
I think that's quite legitimate.
I think in China there are similar sentiments as well.
We have a phrase called 入乡随俗.
When you get into a new town, you need to know and understand the customs locally.
So I think it makes sense when you, let's say, we have different gestures, right?
Hand gestures, or you have different habits when you're speaking.
Maybe in this country, in this culture, it's offensive.
So that is quite legitimate.
And that is also something that people will recommend when you're traveling abroad, that is, learn some culture in that place and try not to offend others.
I'll see that's necessary and i do agree with you on that.
You shouldn't, but it shouldn't, be the reason stopping you from going out.
Yeah right, like just the internet covers almost everything nowadays.
Just search if they're like actual taboo Regarding daily gestures were things you shouldn't say in a particular part of the world, and then get prepared and go.
Yeah, because you can read all the books you want to, But sometimes even that information isn't really accurate.
I was really, really worried about that.
So in this book I'm reading one of the most important things when you travel to Korea, do not eat food and walk down the street at the same time.
People will find that very offensive.
So for the first three months in Korea, if I had anything, if I had a little candy bar, I'm hiding in a corner behind a building making sure that nobody sees me eat it.
And it turned out it's not really true at all.
But my point is that yeah, you can read all you want, but being there and making mistakes hopefully little tiny mistakes, nothing too offensive that's another really great way to learn.
Yeah.
As long as you don't think that whatever I do, I'll be tolerated.
Don't go out of your own comfort zone or country and think that way.
Then if it's just a minor mistake, that due to your lack of knowledge or lack of local custom, then it's absolutely okay.
Yeah.
Keep in mind you are an ambassador for your own country when you're traveling overseas.
That's always a good tip too.
All right.
Well, one of the cool things about living here in China and living in Beijing and I think this was a surprise to me is that There is really no language barrier.
And that doesn't mean that I'm relying on the apps 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because that's kind of what I expected I would have to do.
But you don't really have to do that at all.
And one of the things that I think that China, with its tourism, has done really, really well is let people know that that you don't really have to speak Chinese to travel comfortably and enjoy the country.
And I guess that's proof in some of the numbers.
The inbound tourists are booming.
The numbers are booming.
Yeah, some stats from the report from Xinhua is showing that in the first half of 2025, Chinese mainland recorded more than 19 million foreign visitors.
And this total already accounts for like 71 of the 2024 full year international visitor volume, which is around 27 million people.
Yeah.
And given this current pace, the total volume of inbound tourists in the second half of 2025 is expected to exceed 35 million, potentially setting a new historical high for China, surpassing that of the 2019 peak.
Yeah, that's really good news for the numbers, right?
And when you travel to the different tourist locations in Beijing and there are a lot you have the famous historical places, but you also have the cool hutongs to hang out in.
And the last time I was in a hutong.
Hutong means like small alleyways, and they'll often have shops there.
I just saw so, so, so many tourists.
And I actually talked to a lot of tourists there at the time and they said that they were having a tremendous time so far with their time in Beijing.
So what are some of the reasons?
Do you think that are why the numbers, the tourist inbound numbers, are so high?
Well, first of all we do have this visa-free kind of policy that's encouraging a lot of the inbound travel in recent years.
And also the expansion of visa-free access, it does lead to an explosion of diverse entry reasons as well.
So not merely because of wanting to see the culture change is drawing more people here, but also non-traditional tourism activities, including business travel and visiting relatives, academic exchanges.
We've seen that quite common these days in art exhibitions, medical travel and Chinese language study.
These have all become the major forces or say, elements or reasons that attracts people from outside of China to want to come and experience a bit more here.
And just quickly chiming into your impression of the alleys, not all hutongs are designed to be tourism spots.
No, they're not.
You're very easily getting lost in those just residential hutongs.
Which I've done.
Yeah.
The hutongs, so these little alleyways, these are the old historic alleyways of Beijing, right?
And the cool thing is that they kind of hide Right in the middle of the city.
Yeah.
The entrances to these alleyways, which these alleyways lead to, like a grid of an old residential neighborhood.
Yeah.
And the entrances kind of hide in plain sight.
They're usually quite small and quite narrow, right?
And when you get in there, you walk in there.
First of all, it's beautiful.
It's peaceful.
The sounds of the city are magically hidden.
Yeah.
Right?
They just disappear.
All the sounds of the city disappear and you feel like you're transported back in time a little bit.
But- you're guaranteed to get lost.
Yeah, almost guaranteed, because the navigation systems they tend to get confused about where you're supposed to be inside those places.
But it's totally fine because it's not like you're dropped in the middle of a jungle or something like that.
All right.
So the visa free policy, it's one of the big reasons that people can come here.
And it's just such a big deal, isn't it?
Because if people are choosing where they're going to go on holiday and if they know they can go to a spot where they don't have to fill in extra paperwork, they don't have to go online and fill out extra documents.
It's just a better reason.
It makes things so much easier.
And the proof is in the pudding, so to speak.
Yeah.
And lately I think more and more say our Asian neighbors are choosing to come to China to travel around.
And that's consistent with global trends as well, that the largest source of overseas visitors are actually just from neighboring countries.
South Koreans Japanese, are the largest group so far, and followed by visitors from Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam as well.
It's just opening up more say, diversified choices for say, Eastern Asian countries to engage in more and better, deeper communications as well.
And also, we were just chatting about this the other day as well.
In many public facilities nowadays, especially in major cities like in Beijing and in Shanghai, facilities such as labels on the road and also... names on um bus uh what's that thing called again bus stops and and subway gates it's all bilingual yeah so i mean even when you go into the subway station well there were sometimes multilingual yeah yeah um and even when you go into the subway station the when you go in the ticket machines are right there and there's the english button that you press and it's so easy to do it by yourself even with no instruction whatsoever if you do need some instruction though so many times someone has come over to me at the ticket machine and said do you need some help or not even spoken to me and just kind of press the english button for me um which is just such a nice thing it's such a nice thing right and i think lot of people when maybe I'm wrong about this but I think a lot of people when they think about potentially traveling to China that's one of the things they think that could be a difficulty they my assumption was oh well nothing's going to be in English I'm gonna have to figure everything out I was totally wrong I was totally and completely wrong about that it's such a an easy place to get around I can't speak to many other places in the country where But I'm sure it's true if it's true here in Beijing.
And it's not just Beijing that it's easy to get around, because other cities, other parts of the country they're doing things to make things simple for traveling into the country too.
What are some examples of that?
Yeah, not only these multilingual signages and also international payment are offered.
Like, you can use all of these international credit cards to pay.
And cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou and Tianjin are becoming that kind of international consumption center cities, part of which including improving services for international visitors, which including services that I just mentioned before.
And translation devices have been installed in not only metro stations, but also many tourist attractions like the Summer Palace.
I remember they have that kind of handheld translators for foreign visitors.
And then they can have that explanation to every spot in that place.
So you can have not only a visit there, you can also know the knowledge and a little bit of history about that place.
Yeah.
And you go to the major tourist attractions.
One of the things that you can rent is the earpiece that gives you the translation.
I think it's in many different languages.
You can choose your language and then there's explanations of where you are.
I think the Forbidden City does that.
And I think I used that when I was there too.
Lots of great reasons to travel inside the country.
Lots of great reasons to visit China.
Lots of great reasons to visit outside of China during this holiday season.
That is for sure.
