Influential Chinese blogger travels to America, falls in love with Costco pizza


Milwaukee is a better city to visit than Chicago. Baseball games at Wrigley Field are boring.
These aren't samplings of #TweetYourUnpopularOpinion, but rather the views of an influential Chinese travel blogger, Jun Song, whose "grass is always greener on the other side" perspective is being used to promote foreign tourism in the United States, the Chicago Tribune reports. In particular, cities such as Chicago aim to capitalize on Chinese tourists, who spend more money per U.S. vacation than any other nation except India. In fact, in 2012, the Chinese spent more worldwide than any other nation on their holidays, pumping $9 billion into their travels stateside.
But on a sponsored vacation promoting Great Lakes tourism, Song surprised Americans by not quite liking, well, the usual.
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A visit to Lou Malnati's for authentic Chicago deep-dish pizza was also among his disappointments. Song said there was too much cheese and the crust was a little hard. He said he much preferred Pizza Hut of China. The best American pizza he has sampled to date was at a Costco in Seattle."Costco pizza I like," Song said, enthusiastically bypassing his translator. [Chicago Tribune]
It remains to be seen if Song's 55 million blog visitors will take that recommendation to heart.
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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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