The Hidden France tour

A few weeks ago, I was walking my dog in the evening when a coach stopped outside the hotel in the village centre and started disgorging a gaggle of Chinese tourists. They saw us and started talking to me excitedly in Mandarin, a dialect which I do not understand – so I responded in Cantonese which agitated them even more. Eventually I found out from their tour guide that the group was doing a tour of “Hidden France” (or something like that), visiting places which are way off the usual tourist routes. Hence their surprise at meeting a Chinese man walking a pug in a remote French village at one of their first stops.