Mystery solved: Why Chinese tourists are flocking to an obscure English village

For months, the locals of an obscure English village have wondered why hoardes of Chinese tourists are roaming their streets. Are they being punished by their greedy tour company?

It may be one of the year's greatest travel mysteries. And why not? There aren't exactly a lot.

Still, when busloads of Chinese tourists started turning up in the otherwise unremarkable village of Kidlington, Oxfordshire, some months ago, it was a case as intriguing to the English press (and the English) as a Midsomer murder.

They wandered around the plain (sorry Kidlington) residential streets, snapping photos. One man was supposedly even caught jumping on someone's garden trampoline.

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First, the mystified locals peered out from behind their curtains. Soon, reporters were poking for good angles through the bushes.

"Chinese tourists mob peaceful English village and take selfies", the headlines said.

Heads were scratched. Were they lost? Was it global warming? Were the roses looking particularly lovely this year?

The village Facebook page was abuzz with theories.

Recently, some believed they had found the answer: the village had been marketed in their home country as "a quintessential English village".

At the time, that made some sense, particularly in light of the pictures published, showing camera-toting men and women posing in front of the rose bushes and pottering in the petunias.

Now, a tour guide has blown the whistle on a company supposedly behind the strange goings-on.

According to him, it was a ploy on the part of the company to make more cash - or, at least, to sort of punish those who'd been aiming for a discount.

The New York Times quoted 48-year-old Sun Jianfeng, a guide with Beijing Hua Yuan International Travel, as saying customers were normally charged £53 (about R900) for an optional, Chinese-language tour of the ancestral home of Winston Churchill.

But some had figured out they could simply walk there in their "free time" and buy a ticket at the gate for £24.90 (R425).

And so they were heading off on foot - much to the annoyance of those who had paid more (and presumably the tour company).

So the tour company responded by dropping them too far away to walk - in Kidlington.

block_quotes_start If I was having nearly £30 added on to the price of a ticket to have a tour guide take me round somewhere in China I'd probably want to save money too block_quotes_end

According to Sun, the idea had been to drop "those who had opted out" of the paid tour too far for them to make it on foot to Blenheim Palace, with time enough to enjoy its lavish interiors and gardens before they'd have to start walking back to make it to the bus on time.

It's almost 6km from Kidlington to Blenheim Palace.

As the Daily Mail puts it, "The tourists were being punished for refusing to pay a hefty surcharge to visit Blenheim".

Kidlington locals, though, seem to be taking the disappointing explanation in their stride.

One, who asked not to be named, told the Daily Mail: "I never believed all that stuff about being conned into thinking Harry Potter was filmed here or it was because Richard Branson used to live here.

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"If I was having nearly £30 added on to the price of a ticket to have a tour guide take me round somewhere in China I'd probably want to save money too."

It was also pointed out that the town, as is, is not without its charms.

Besides those flowers and manicured lawns, it's got a 12th-century church and a pretty river (the Cherwell), plus seven pubs, a few cafés, a library, four restaurants and a main street.

So where do we book?