Theirs was a generation raised in the awful shadow of the Cultural Revolution who often had aeons of good manners wiped clean from them, only to be replaced with a few shallow algorithms about being a good little communist. And now even that has bled away, what you're looking at is the purest noveau riche you'll ever see. A new consumer class that started from the bottom, and now that they're approaching the top, inevitably feel that more is more. As with any nouveau riche, it can look from the outside that they seem to want little more from life than to be respected for their raw spending power.
And this is something in which we can certainly oblige. All these jokes about faecal fondnesses will make an excellent psychic defence against our relegation in the world's pecking order. Right now, the Chinese are pretty much single-handedly keeping the European luxury goods market alive, and that's all we're still selling. They have bought Givenchy and Dolce like they are going out of fashion. They love Jaguar and Chateauneuf Du Pape and Talisker. As Europe itself becomes the sick man of Europe, the Chinese ascent to global tourism kings in 2012 marked the turn of the tide of patronage from West to East. Throughout the next decade, it's going to be us barefoot and crying out in pidgin Mandarin to them: "You want Smythson, mister? You like the Yardley? Me give you Burberry good price all the time. You'll see, very good."
We may well be under invasion from ill-mannered Chinese tourist hordes, but our reaction to it says just as much about our own insecurities as it does any concept of intrinsic Han coarseness.