A tempest in a teapot over Chinese tourists wearing Thai school uniforms has ended with authorities conceding that the visitors mean no harm and are probably doing the country a favour by promoting it.
The saga began with the emergence online of pictures of young Chinese women modelling Thai high-school uniforms. It took only a day for an alert lawyer to discover that a law most people had never heard of might have been broken.
In this case, it was the Student Uniform Act, under which non-students can be fined for dressing up as students and then misbehaving in ways that might harm the reputation of a school. That was enough for the Office of the Basic Education Commission (Obec) to issue a warning to fashion-conscious tourists.
But Atthaphon Sangkhawasee, permanent secretary for the Ministry of Education, said on Thursday that the visitors did not have any intention to make fun of any educational institutions.
The ministry’s regulations related to uniforms were aimed only at preventing wrongdoers from wearing uniforms to falsely blame a school or to cover up a crime, Mr Atthapol said.
“I have seen from online posts that they had their own names embroidered on student shirts,” he said of the tourists. “That is cute and beautiful and does not cause any damage.
“It also promotes tourism in Thailand. It shows that tourists see the beauty of Thai student uniforms and thus put them on.”
However, he suggested tourists should be warned not to wear student uniforms at night for their own safety.
The uniform craze among Chinese people took off years ago when the Thai teen romantic comedy First Love, also known as A Little Thing Called Love, became popular in China.
The fad faded during the Covid-19 pandemic. It re-emerged when famous Chinese actress and singer Ju Jingyi wore a Thai student uniform during her stay in the country last month and shared her pictures online.
Thanet Phetsuwan, deputy governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), took a positive view of the fashion fad, saying it could encourage Chinese tourists to visit Thailand.
Chuwit Sirivejjakul, the TAT director for East Asia, said that since the fad resulted from popular Thai series, the agency planned to woo fans of so-called Y series to the country.
Some Chinese tourists had the names of Thai foods embroidered on their Thai student shirts and that also helped promote Thai foods, he added.
