Much has been made about the largest-ever group of Chinese tourists to visit Switzerland. We talked to some of them about their experiences and about the company that invited them to visit the Alpine nation. Standing near the imposing Nydegg bridge in Bern, one man in his thirties stood out in the large Chinese tour group he was part of. Everyone in the group seemed to know him. When he was approached by swissinfo.ch, however, he declined to give his real name. He also declined to be photographed or filmed. But he told his story. He was part of the second batch of the exceptionally large Chinese tour group that visited Switzerland in May. Some 12,000 tourists came on a promotional tour by Jeunesse Global, a US-based multi-level marketing company that primarily caters to Chinese-speaking people around the world. The man we met in Bern described himself on WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, as an “independent entrepreneur” born in the 1980s. He was well-known in the tour ...
