Illustration: Peter C. Espina/GT

During a visit to Tibet a few years ago, I was browsing through the jewelry stands outside Jokhang monastery in Lhasa. I was asking about the prices and comparing some pieces of jewelry, without particularly looking to buy. Then the teenage sales girl said, "Just buy anything! You people from the mainland have money, don't you?"

I was offended. But I also know it was nothing personal. Chinese mainland tourists have a reputation. And that reputation is not a good one: rich, rude and loud. They also don't know how to use public toilets properly and allow their children to urinate in the street. The more Chinese people travel abroad, the worse their reputation seems to become.

The Chinese government is well aware of this. They are blacklisting tourists who behave badly, for instance in a case where a passenger scalded a flight attendant with hot water.

But I wonder if that is the correct way to tackle the problem. Everyone who travels  contributes to the image of Chinese travelers as a whole. Nobody wants to be painted with the same brush because of a handful of travelers who behave badly. But the thing is, as travelers, should we be thinking about the reputation we are creating as a group of say "Chinese travelers," or "millennials" or even "female travelers"?

I'm not a model traveler myself. Being shy, I am not talkative or the most open to making new friends in strange places. So I am probably contributing to the image of Chinese tourists being labeled unfriendly, rigid and boring.

But just as I hate to be put in a box and labeled as a rude and boring Chinese person, my social awkwardness should not be a reflection on other young, female Chinese tourists.

On a flight back from Europe once, I sat next to a woman in her 50s. She was wearing Hermes from head to toe. Despite already carrying several duty-free shopping bags, she still browsed through the in-flight catalogue and decided that a $100 bottle of perfume was too much of a bargain to pass up. As she reached for her purse from her Louis Vuitton bag, I was shocked by what I saw inside: two sets of cutlery, butter and cheese, serviettes, crackers, water, basically all the stuff from the in-flight meals. And even the blanket handed out on the plane.

Everybody likes free stuff, that much I can understand. But would you really expect someone with a wad of 100 dollar bills in her purse to take all these things? Taking food is probably fine, but a blanket? Isn't that simply stealing? She would probably take free toiletries from hotels in China too.

I'm not saying bad behavior while traveling should be tolerated and ignored. But to target people who are damaging the Chinese reputation abroad, while condoning that same behavior in China, is not the way to go about teaching citizens good behavior. Yes, mistreating flight attendants is unacceptable, but it is equally bad manners to park your car in a bicycle lane and not give way to pedestrians while turning.

This article was published on the Global Times Metropolitan section Two Cents page, a space for reader submissions, including opinion, humor and satire. The ideas expressed are those of the author alone, and do not represent the position of the Global Times.