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.
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.
Do us all a favour and go there on the weekend and ask them. Although I admit that sounds more like a Reddit challenge, perhaps where this story belongs.
Cue the next plot development where a whole bunch of redditors turn up this weekend to ask said tourists why they are there and locals become equally baffled why a whole different demographic of people have just turned up in their village, but don't ask them either.
The following week, researchers go there... 4chan were behind the whole thing.
from what i can see, it doesn't look like average suburbia in the US or china, which are basically just copies of the US suburbs (large mcmansions, cul de sacs, sterile landscaping, etc)
it has a very specific english quaintness to it.
fwiw, german suburbs (i was in bavaria) also have a very german quaintness to them.
beyond a certain threshold, it's all the same to a tourist. what i see in your pictures:
stone houses, thatched roofs (or whatever the modern equivalent is), cobblestone streets, roundabouts, little shops and pubs, old churches, gardens and trees, and of course english people milling about... pretty much exactly what pops into your head when you think 'english village'.
looks like kidlington meets the criteria just fine:
I've been one of these weird foreigners taking pictures of "boring landscapes" for no appreciable reason.
For me it was on the backroads of SE Asia. I just found everything -- the farms, the houses, the roads -- to be beautiful and interesting compared to what I experience in America.
I'm sure some of the locals thought I was a weirdo for taking pictures of water buffalo and dirt roads and farms, but to me it was all completely novel and interesting.
Maybe they're visiting it because it's "average suburbia" aka how people really live in an English suburb and not some town that goes out of its way to be tourist friendly.
Someone in China may have very well chosen it specifically because it represents normal and not an image projected by a place that is already a tourist destination.
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.
I had a similar experience in Barbados, when I took a tour from the cruise ship I was on to visit the Concorde they have at Barbados' airport. It was pretty comical; on the way back our driver unexpectedly stopped at this little bar and grill in the middle of nowhere. We weren't the only ones surprised; the owner had to be woken up to open the place. I think there was some negotiating going on too, to convince her it was worth the trouble.
It wound up being nice; she had an outdoor patio overlooking a valley, and the food and drinks were just fine. It could have been an official part of the tour, but I guess if it was the cruise line would get a cut.
> 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.
Speaking as an ex-local of Bicester and a Kirtlington, it's surely not Kidlington itself. Kidlington, like Bicester (sans the "village") is your typical nondescript that exists near some beautiful Oxfordshire villages (such as Islip and Kirtlington).
For Dr Fegg, outside of the A4095 you probably drive through on your way to Oxford, there is a very beautiful village hidden from you - for example http://www.kirtlingtonpark.co.uk/ - Unlike some other obviously lovely villages, you actually have to explore to find the beauty.
As a local of Chicago, I miss being able to visit Kirtlington (although given, Kidlington used to have some of the best chippies)
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.
When I spent quite a bit of time in China, I would use Google Earth to find places that hadn't had all their pre-revolution homes replaced by highrises. It wasn't that easy!
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!)
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.
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.
> 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.
> Baz Daniels, who has lived in Kidlington for more than 20 years, said he had been in touch with a friend in China to try to get to the bottom of the tourist influx to his village.
> "Kidlington is apparently being marketed by Chinese tourist agencies as a beautiful English village on the way to Bicester Village shopping centre," he said.
> "Many of the visitors live in cities, and love to see things like the hanging baskets and little flowers in people's gardens.
> "Visitors are now actively asking to add Kidlington to their tour itineraries," he added.
It sounds like the real mystery is how it got started and why it hasn't stopped.
Once a place becomes part of the tour packages, it apparently becomes a fixture and people ask for it. At least that's what I've been told by tourists about my current hometown Heidelberg, which is about as nice as a hundred other similar places in Germany and yet receives almost every Asian tourist in the country on a 10-day Europe package tour. Apparently the location is convenient too.
Altstadt (historic city centre) associated with the period of Romanticism with historic buildings and an old stone bridge with mediaeval bridge head, a castle with a wine cask several metres in diameter, a Nazi-era outdoor amphitheatre, a lively student body, and all contained in a compact town near the Rhine in an area surrounded by wooded hills and quaint wine villages (e.g., Weinheim). So its popularity is not really surprising.
As far as cliché tourist destinations go you could do a lot worse. Certainly beats Frankfurt or Mannheim.
Also, there is a funicular. Tourists love funiculars.
I'm reminded of a Woody Allen movie (which I can't remember the name of). It had the 4-5 subplots/different characters, the one being a random man from nowhere who suddenly (and for no real reason) becomes a giant celebrity. Everyone suddenly wants to know his opinions on everything (and/or to get to know him much much better).
That continues until after a while they pick someone else, and he just goes back to being a random nobody.
I believe he was called Mr. Pisanello (or some such); the movie also featured Penelope Cruz playing a prostitute, accidentally pretending to be a man's wife.
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.
Oxford Parkway railway station (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.
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) says that the rumor was spread that this is where parts of Harry Potter (the Dursleys) was filmed.
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.
46 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadI 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.
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.
The following week, researchers go there... 4chan were behind the whole thing.
from what i can see, it doesn't look like average suburbia in the US or china, which are basically just copies of the US suburbs (large mcmansions, cul de sacs, sterile landscaping, etc)
it has a very specific english quaintness to it.
fwiw, german suburbs (i was in bavaria) also have a very german quaintness to them.
Here's Benmead Road in Kidlington, one of the places the tourists are reputed to be turning up: https://goo.gl/maps/urEVsQEmRqx
Here's historic Woodstock, which is just three or four miles away: https://goo.gl/maps/M2M9dzXv2e32
Here's Charlbury, another five miles away, where I live: https://goo.gl/maps/EDgNtFERyLD2
And literally 1.5mi from Kidlington, here's Thrupp, with its amazingly quaint canal and pubs: https://goo.gl/maps/Su1Y5uxAGB22
My only guess so far is that there's some slack in a tour schedule, and some jaded tour planner said "take them to a village, any village will do".
stone houses, thatched roofs (or whatever the modern equivalent is), cobblestone streets, roundabouts, little shops and pubs, old churches, gardens and trees, and of course english people milling about... pretty much exactly what pops into your head when you think 'english village'.
looks like kidlington meets the criteria just fine:
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.8177024,-1.2723015,3a,75y,2....
this area would be very appealing to someone looking for a slice of english suburbia.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Detroit,+MI,+USA/@42.428...
I wonder if people would mind contributing examples of what they see as "average suburbia in the US". Here's a couple of examples to get us started.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Walla+Walla,+WA+99362/@46....
https://www.google.com/maps/@46.4113052,-105.8455333,3a,75y,...
https://www.google.com/maps/@46.810146,-100.7572514,3a,75y,1...
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6438991,-116.4085499,3a,75y,...
Alternatively this: https://www.bing.com/mapspreview?v=2&rtp=adr.~adr.Carlyle%20...
Las Vegas: https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1712638,-115.2548314,3a,75y,...
Bloomington, MN: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8543293,-93.314196,3a,75y,15...
For me it was on the backroads of SE Asia. I just found everything -- the farms, the houses, the roads -- to be beautiful and interesting compared to what I experience in America.
I'm sure some of the locals thought I was a weirdo for taking pictures of water buffalo and dirt roads and farms, but to me it was all completely novel and interesting.
Someone in China may have very well chosen it specifically because it represents normal and not an image projected by a place that is already a tourist destination.
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.
It wound up being nice; she had an outdoor patio overlooking a valley, and the food and drinks were just fine. It could have been an official part of the tour, but I guess if it was the cruise line would get a cut.
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.
Our stop at Kerid Crater Lake was really short, in favor of the next stop at a strip mall. I was not amused.
Though despite my annoyance, I can see it being an overall lucrative arrangement for them.
For Dr Fegg, outside of the A4095 you probably drive through on your way to Oxford, there is a very beautiful village hidden from you - for example http://www.kirtlingtonpark.co.uk/ - Unlike some other obviously lovely villages, you actually have to explore to find the beauty.
As a local of Chicago, I miss being able to visit Kirtlington (although given, Kidlington used to have some of the best chippies)
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!)
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.
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.
> 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.
> Baz Daniels, who has lived in Kidlington for more than 20 years, said he had been in touch with a friend in China to try to get to the bottom of the tourist influx to his village.
> "Kidlington is apparently being marketed by Chinese tourist agencies as a beautiful English village on the way to Bicester Village shopping centre," he said.
> "Many of the visitors live in cities, and love to see things like the hanging baskets and little flowers in people's gardens.
> "Visitors are now actively asking to add Kidlington to their tour itineraries," he added.
It sounds like the real mystery is how it got started and why it hasn't stopped.
As far as cliché tourist destinations go you could do a lot worse. Certainly beats Frankfurt or Mannheim.
Also, there is a funicular. Tourists love funiculars.
It looks like the link here on HN was changed to an expanded story.
The one I read this morning was: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-36706591
That continues until after a while they pick someone else, and he just goes back to being a random nobody.
I believe he was called Mr. Pisanello (or some such); the movie also featured Penelope Cruz playing a prostitute, accidentally pretending to be a man's wife.
And this is the Daily Mail article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3676849/Residents-ba...
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) says that the rumor was spread that this is where parts of Harry Potter (the Dursleys) was filmed.
Is that what Kidlington is like? ;)