Chinese Tourist Mistaken For Refugee, Spends Two Weeks in German Migrant Camp

A 31-year-old tourist from China experienced what would likely be considered one of the worst Euro trips of all time. It all started when his wallet was stolen. He decided to report the crime to the Heidelberg police, but mistakenly reported it to the Heidelberg town hall.

He was given some paperwork that he thought was a police report, but was really an asylum application. There was no way for him to know that, since he didn’t speak German or English. After signing the documents he was given a medical examination, fingerprinted, and had his passport and visa confiscated before he was whisked away to a migrant camp. There he stayed for two weeks before anyone noticed that something was different about him.

A Red Cross official noticed that he was surprisingly well dressed for a refugee, so he used a translation app on his phone to figure out what was going on with the man. The tourist told him “I want to walk to Italy,” which didn’t make sense until a Mandarin speaking worker from a local restaurant arrived to act as a translator. That’s when the official realized that the refugee was really a tourist who just wanted to go back to his vacation.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this story, isn’t the bureaucratic hell that this person went through. What’s really weird is how obedient the tourist was throughout the whole ordeal. He never showed any sign of resistance, and reportedly had “a lot of respect for authority.” The authorities told him to give up his personal effects and delivered him a migrant camp, and he never questioned it. When he was eventually released, he “said goodbye politely” and didn’t press charges against the German government.

Clearly, growing up under China’s authoritarian regime had conditioned the tourist to follow orders without question.