In the end, it wasn’t the crowds that made Xiao Minhan lose her appreciation for China’s tourist sites — it was a blue-and-white street sign. On it, where you’d expect to find the name of a street, was written: “I’m in Chongqing, missing you.”

The signs began appearing in the southwestern megacity in 2022, which is when Xiao, a 32-year-old travel enthusiast from Beijing, encountered her first. “At the time, I thought it was a bit artsy and distinctive, so I took a photo and posted it on WeChat Moments,” she tells Sixth Tone, referencing the Chinese super app’s social post feature.

But soon, she found that identical signs had popped up at nearly every scenic spot she visited around the country, with only the place name swapped out for those of other cities and villages — even the names of cafés, stores, and events.

“Seeing it over and over again, I don’t feel like taking photos anymore — (the signs) just make the place feel tacky,” she says. “Domestic tourist attractions are becoming increasingly homogenized.”

Dummy street signs were just the beginning. China’s tourist sites now increasingly feature cheap, garish objects like plastic flowers and oversized plush toys crammed into natural landscapes and on centuries-old temple eaves. Rustic towns by day have become neon nightmares by night. Million-year-old stalactites drenched in rainbow lights have been reduced to gaudy karaoke sets.

Chinese travelers are noticing the tacky trend — and they’re not happy. In April, netizens slammed a cheap, plastic, multicolored heart sculpture amid the salt lakes and snow-capped mountains of the country’s northwestern Qinghai province as an “eyesore.”

The scenic area responded that they had had it professionally designed because they believed some visitors wanted more photo spots to “check in,” or daka, a phenomenon in which tourists mark where they’ve been by taking and posting photos of themselves at a location.

But travelers were not appeased. The heart sculpture set off a wave of online backlash toward tasteless tourist spots, with a top comment on WeChat reading, “Our Eastern aesthetics are almost disappearing in front of these cookie-cutter influencer-style tourist spots. It’s really disrespectful to the aesthetics of our ancestors.” In a popular comment on microblogging platform Weibo, one user also asked, “Can’t our scenic spots leave nature untouched?” The topic has since accumulated over 26 million views.

A China Youth Daily survey of 1,334 people in June found that almost 85% of respondents considered aesthetic quality important when choosing a destination. Moreover, 95% reported encountering “aesthetic disappointments,” with more than one-fifth saying they see them “frequently.” Most respondents blamed over-commercialization, as well as the pursuit of money and viral trends, for the trend.

In response, from May 15 to June 5, lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, launched the “Scenic Area Aesthetics Revival Plan,” inviting users to post beautiful sights captured during their trips. The related topic has been viewed over 77 million times, with some posts garnering over 20,000 likes.

Now, attractions are also shifting away from their past “tacky” aesthetics to simpler decor, in line with tourists’ wishes.

Cultural empathy

Xiao is equally disheartened by the growing uniformity of China’s “ancient towns,” often once historical, densely populated areas that have been given a facelift. She says that towns even thousands of kilometers apart share astonishing similarities — shops along stone-paved streets selling the same souvenirs, and the air always smelling of stinky tofu, despite the snack originating in eastern China.

“I try to avoid these so-called ‘ancient towns’ when I travel in China now,” Xiao says. “They all feel like copies of the same theme park.”

Zhang Yujia, a Gen-Z traveler from Shanghai, echoes this sentiment. Recalling Huishan Ancient Town in the eastern city of Wuxi, she said that man-made additions spoiled the views. The paths were lined with historic buildings, yet cheap red-and-yellow paper lanterns hung from trees along the street, disrupting the town’s overall black-and-white architectural style. “There isn’t a single photo-worthy spot,” she says.

For Min Guan, founder of the Beijing-based rural revitalization consultancy Future Rural Lab, the problem stems from the effects of social media. “The rise of social media has turned travel photos into social currency, fundamentally shifting tourist motivations from ‘I want to go’ to ‘I want to be seen,’” he says.

He argues that “check-in” culture should serve merely as a small component of a destination rather than its main draw.

“The problem with homogeneity is that it’s easily replicated and quickly fades,” Min says. “There are no winners in the ‘check-in’ business model: the market is cutthroat … tourists end up having poor experiences, and local culture loses the ‘soil’ it needs to grow.”

Lin Bishu, a professor at Xiamen University’s School of Management, traces the problem to a loss of culture. “Unique local histories, dialects, folklore, and architecture are stamped out because communities lack the means of telling their own stories,” Lin says. “Instead, they rely on generic internet templates, slogans, and viral symbols to replace cultural expression.”

Lin says “check-in” culture can rapidly boost visibility at a low cost, especially for niche destinations, but the long-term damage is significant. “When travel devolves into mere photography, tourists lose the opportunity for deep cultural experiences and empathy,” he says. “Once the photo is taken, disenchantment sets in.”

To preserve cultural idiosyncrasies, Lin advocates establishing strict standards to define core local symbols and values. Protecting indigenous residents, traditions, and ways of life is crucial, allowing culture to grow organically rather than artificially, he says.

He points to Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock, in Norway​ as a prime example of sustainable tourism. The site preserves the original cliffs and natural landscape, all without commercial development or the viral gimmicks he sees at many “check-in” sites in China. “It embodies a philosophy of respecting nature, prioritizing preservation over development, and maintaining authenticity, which could be a model for China’s natural heritage sites,” Lin says.

To avoid tacky tourism, some Chinese scenic spots are already taking a different approach: doing less.

The Xixia Imperial Tombs are one such example. Located at the foot of the Helan Mountains in northwestern China, the site holds the burial grounds of emperors from the Western Xia dynasty (1038–1227).

Here, there are no fake ancient streets, no plastic flower walls, no ugly swings. Signage and railings blend into the landscape, preserving the raw, windswept feel of the thousand-year-old tombs.

Since becoming a UNESCO site in 2025, the tombs have drawn growing crowds. Earlier this year, the site’s stone guardians, deliberately designed to look broken, went viral on Chinese social media. Visitors praised the site, with one highly upvoted comment reading, “The damaged statues, set against the vast northwestern landscape, have become the site’s most poetic feature.”

Tianzhang Temple in the eastern Zhejiang province also recently went viral for its unique Song-dynasty (960–1279) aesthetic of space and restraint — a lawn, a stone path, and a few understated Song-style buildings — with netizens lauding it as “the pinnacle of Chinese-style aesthetics.”

As for Zhang, her favorite destination is Wuxi’s Li Garden. “In spring, standing on the opposite bank, I saw willow branches and peach blossoms blending like an ink-wash painting,” she recalls.

“I’d expected it to be just an ordinary park, but it turned out to be far more stunning than I ever imagined.”

Additional reporting: Mao Rui; editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: A woman poses for a photo amid plastic flowers decorating a waterfall at a scenic spot in Luoyang, Henan province, 2025. Image from Xiaohongshu)