Puzzles in Understanding Chinese Tourist Behaviour: Towards a Triple-C Gaze PHILIP L. PEARCE, MAO-YING WU and AMY OSMOND Abstract: Considerable efforts are underway to understand the behaviours of the growing number of outbound Chinese tourists. Existing research has shown that this market is complex, and an awareness of regional differences, change within China, and sensitivity to other world views are needed to guide studies in this area. For western researchers, several puzzles require conceptual clarification. These items of interest include what motivates Chinese tourists and are their motives different from those of western tourists? Among the other questions to be asked are, how do Chinese tourists interact with each other and their hosts, and how do they view unfamiliar natural environments? These are big questions and require a holistic and comprehensive approach to seeking initial answers. The paper approaches the puzzles posed by Chinese tourist behaviour by considering tourists' experiences as an orchestrated pattern of five blended forces. In particular, attention was directed towards the social behaviours, the role of sensory modalities, and the cognitive, affective and activity facets of experience. Further, this review explains how three major streams of influence (Confucianism, Communism and Capitalism) operate on and through the Chinese outbound tourists' experiences. The paper identifies these multiple influences as producing an oscillating triple-C gaze. The application of this concept can arguably help better delineate the perspectives of the twenty first century outbound Chinese travellers. As the quest to solve the puzzles of Chinese tourist behaviour gathers momentum, the opportunities for more longitudinal research and comparative studies viewed within this triple-C gaze are identified as useful complements to existing work. Keywords: Chinese outbound tourists; tourist behaviour; broader cultural forces; triple-C gaze. TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH VOL. 38(2), 2013: 145–157 ISSN (print): 0250–8281/ISSN (online): 2320–0308 ©2013 Tourism Recreation Research http://www.trrworld.org PHILIP L. PEARCE is Foundation Professor of Tourism in the School of Business, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. e-mail: philip.pearce@jcu.edu.au MAO-YING WU is Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Business, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. e-mail: maoying.wu@gmail.com AMY OSMOND is Ph.D. Candidate in Tourism in the School of Business, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia. e-mail: amy.osmond@my.jcu.edu.au Introduction There are many different and interwoven activities in the tapestry of tourism study (Jafari 2000). Specific empirical studies focussed on localized tourism topics are dominant and very important. Attempts to compare issues and cases are also valuable. Many papers endeavour, in some way, to build or advance theories or conceptual insights in tourism research while others provide integrative descriptive summaries (Smith and Lee 2010). The present paper lies within the last mentioned category; it seeks to synthesize existing work with a succinct organizing account. The topic of interest is Chinese tourist behaviour and experience. The goal of the paper is to summarize the underlying forces shaping the way Chinese tourists see the world. The work is directly linked to the concept of gaze as expressed in multiple publications starting with Urry (1990) and recently developed in the work edited by Moufakkir and Reisinger (2013). At this point, it is valuable to identify several puzzles inherent in Chinese tourist behaviour. Western researchers, who still comprise a dominant group in the tourism studies community, can find it difficult to understand Chinese tourists. The puzzles can be posed as the following questions: What is it that Chinese tourists really seek as