One by one the tour buses descended on the blue collar neighborhood in Hong Kong known as To Kwa Wan — literally translated as Potato Bay — unloading throngs of travelers from mainland China outside large restaurants where a quick lunch awaited them inside.

旅遊巴士一輛接一輛地來到香港藍領社區土瓜灣，在大餐廳外面卸下成群的中國內地遊客，他們是來這裡吃簡餐的。

Outfitted in white, red and orange ball caps to denote which tour they belonged to, the visitors crowded the sidewalks, smoked cigarettes under a “No Smoking” sign and bumped into the glass storefront of a real estate office where Nicky Lam, a property agent, was rolling her eyes.

遊客們頭上戴著白色、紅色、橙色的棒球帽，帽子的顏色表明他們屬於哪個旅遊團。他們擠滿了人行道，有人在「禁止吸煙」的標誌下抽煙，有人衝進一家房地產辦公室的玻璃門，坐在辦公室裡的房地產經紀人妮基·林（音）對這一切頗為惱火。

“They’re very loud,” Ms. Lam said, complaining that some of the tourists used her office bathroom and water cooler without asking.

「他們很吵，」林女士說，她抱怨有些遊客不問可否，就隨便用她辦公室裡的洗手間和飲水機。

“One tourist came in and asked for restaurant recommendations,” she added. “I stared at him and said, ‘This is a real estate office.’”

「有遊客進來問我有什麼好吃的推薦，」她補充道。「我看著他說，『這裡是做地產的。』」

The return of budget mainland tour groups in recent months for the first time since China’s borders were closed by the pandemic in early 2020 has revived old tensions in a city transformed by Beijing’s political crackdown.

新冠病毒大流行2020年初暴發後，中國曾關閉邊境。內地的低價旅行團近幾個月才重回香港，讓這座因中國政府的政治鎮壓而改變的城市重新燃起了曾經的緊張氣氛。

Before the pandemic, an influx of mainlanders and their wealth into Hong Kong sent prices and rents soaring, fueling frustrations among the city’s residents that sometimes spilled over into outright bigotry. In the nearly three years since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law over Hong Kong to assert its political dominance, criticism of the mainland has often been muted.

內地人和他們的財富曾在疫情前湧入香港，導致了當地的房價和租金飆升，加劇了香港居民的不滿情緒，這種情緒有時甚至演變成公然的歧視。自從近三年前，中國政府為維護自己的政治主導地位，對香港實施覆蓋範圍廣泛的國家安全法以來，這裡已經不大聽得到批評內地的聲音。

Now, the public response to the budget tourists — arriving on packages that cost as little as $175 for a two-day visit — has been less than welcoming, and at times, downright rude.

現在，對花錢少的遊客，香港公眾的反應已談不上熱情，有時甚至極為粗魯，這些遊客參加的是兩天只花175美元的旅遊團。

Local residents also say the tourists — who tend to travel in groups of two dozen or more — are too noisy, are snarling traffic and are blighting public spaces by squatting and dining on boxed lunches outdoors. One group offended local sensibilities by slurping cup noodles outside a public toilet in Repulse Bay, a beach redoubt of multimillion-dollar homes.

當地居民還說，這些動輒二三十人的旅行團太吵，妨礙交通，還有人蹲在外面吃盒飯，有礙觀瞻。在數百萬美元豪宅的藏身之地淺水灣，有旅遊團在一個公共廁所外大聲吃著杯麵，頗讓當地人難堪。

Even some members of Hong Kong’s legislature, which is fully stacked with pro-Beijing lawmakers, have lost patience.

就連全部由親北京人士組成的香港立法會的一些議員也失去了耐心。

“Can we have some good quality tour groups?” Kitson Yang asked his colleagues during a recent legislative session while holding up printed pictures of the tourists deluging parts of the city.

「我們能不能有一些優質旅行團呢？」楊永傑在最近一次立法會上問同事們，他手中舉著湧入香港部分地區的遊客的照片。

Before the pandemic, mainland visitors powered Hong Kong tourism, comprising nearly 80 percent of all arrivals in 2018. After the city imposed some of the strictest pandemic measures in the world, restaurants, hotels and shops in Hong Kong were starved for business. The arrival of the budget tours coincides with the government’s push to revive tourism in the city of 7.5 million residents. Largely because of a lack of flights, though, high-spending tourists have stayed away,.

在疫情前，內地遊客是香港旅遊業的主力軍，佔了2018年香港入境遊客的近80%。疫情暴發後，香港採取了一些世界上最嚴格的防控措施，當地的餐館、酒店和商店沒了生意。低價團是在政府努力重振這座750萬人口城市的旅遊業時到來的。但在相當程度上由於缺少航班，高消費的遊客一直沒有出現。

Budget mainland tourists don’t face that problem because they travel by bus or boat. But local business owners have complained about their spending habits, which typically amount to a few minor purchases in local pharmacies — akin to visiting New York and coming away with a tube of Neosporin from Walgreens.

來自內地的窮遊旅行客不受航班限制，因為他們是坐大巴或輪船來的。但當地企業主們對這些遊客的消費習慣頗有微詞，他們常常只在當地藥店裡買點兒什麼，就像是去紐約玩的人只從沃爾格林店買走一管新孢菌素。

“Budget tourists are mainly older people. They don’t spend much,” William Chong, the operator of a pharmacy in Kowloon, said recently after emerging from a six-minute burst of activity in his store — the amount of time tour guides allot each group for shopping in any one store.

「低價團大部分是老人家，他們不會花太多錢，」九龍一家藥店的經營者威廉·張（音）不久前在經歷了六分鐘的忙亂後說道，那是導遊分配給旅遊團在每家店的購物時間。

In the pharmacy, the visitors swept up ointments and instant coffee, but left high-value goods like ginseng untouched.

遊客們把藥店裡的藥膏和速溶咖啡一掃而空，但無人過問人蔘等高價商品。

On online anti-government forums, the tour groups are providing fodder for ridicule, harkening back to the days when some local residents would openly use the slur “locusts” to refer to mainlanders who traveled to Hong Kong to buy cheaper powdered baby formula, medicine and cosmetics to resell in China.

在網上的反政府論壇上，這些旅遊團正在提供譏笑的素材，讓人想起以前有當地民眾公開用「蝗蟲」一詞辱罵來港購物內地人的事情，當時許多內地人批量購買售價比內地低的嬰兒奶粉、藥品和化妝品，將其帶回大陸轉銷。

The taunting works both ways. Mainland users of Douyin, the domestic Chinese version of TikTok, have been making hidden camera-style videos mocking Hong Kongers’ poor command of Mandarin, in the predominantly Cantonese-speaking city. Others have posted videos of instances they felt slighted by restaurant staff for using Mandarin.

譏笑是雙向的。TikTok中文版抖音的內地用戶們一直在製作隱藏攝像頭式的影片，嘲笑香港人糟糕的普通話（香港人主要說粵語）。還有人發布了他們認為是因為自己在飯館裡使用普通話，受到服務員冷落的影片。

Miu Wang, a tour guide, was recently on the second deck of a white-and-pink car ferry in Victoria Harbor that had been converted into a floating restaurant. She watched over dozens of mainlanders tucking into a modest spread that included egg drop soup, stir fried lettuce and a braised chicken and potato dish that was mostly potato.

導遊米尤·王（音）最近在維多利亞港一艘用白色和粉紅色汽車渡輪改造成的水上餐廳的二層甲板上，看著幾十名內地遊客狼吞虎咽地吃著幾道普通菜，包括蛋花湯、炒生菜，以及一道基本都是馬鈴薯的馬鈴薯燒雞肉。

A 20-year veteran of the business, she said Hong Kongers were snobs.

她已經在旅遊業幹了20年，她說香港人自命高雅。

“I need to take care of dozens of visitors at once, “Ms. Wang said about complaints that the tourists exhibit boorish behavior. “I can’t control each of them.”

「我一次要照顧幾十個遊客，」王女士在談到有關遊客行為粗魯的投訴時說。「我不可能管得住每個人。」

The city’s tourism minister, Kevin Yeung, has urged residents to be more accommodating, even while calling for stricter oversight of visitors.

香港旅遊局長楊潤雄呼籲民眾採取更容納的態度，同時呼籲對遊客加強監管。

“Tourists will make the street crowded, but it is a signal of economic growth,” Mr. Yeung said in a recent television interview. “Hong Kong people have been known to be welcoming. It is the time to show this spirit again.”

「遊客會讓街道擁擠，但這是經濟發展的表現，」楊潤雄最近在一次電視採訪中說。「香港人過往是有好客之道的，是時候把這個精神拿出來了。」

To deal with the increased crowds, traffic police now direct buses in neighborhoods like To Kwa Wan. Crowd control barriers on sidewalks funnel tourists toward restaurants.

為了應對不斷增多的人群，政府派警察到土瓜灣等地方指揮巴士交通，還在人行道上設置了控制人群的障礙物，將遊客引向餐館。

“I wanted to travel here the last three years but I couldn’t because of the pandemic,” said Zhang Zhanbin, 43, from Hebei Province in China’s north, who was visiting Hong Kong for the first time on a four-day tour that cost about $400.

「之前疫情三年其實我也想來，但是沒來成，」來自中國河北省的遊客、現年43歲的張占斌說，這是他第一次來香港，四天的旅行費用大約400美元。

Mr. Zhang, a mustachioed rubber factory worker, said he could care less about the complaints because Hong Kong was back in Chinese hands, and not a British colony.

在橡膠廠當工人的張先生留著大鬈曲八字鬍，他一點也不在乎那些抱怨，因為香港回到了中國人手裡，不再是英國殖民地。

“I’m not too worried about Hong Kong people discriminating against us.” he said. “After all, Hong Kong has been returned.”

「我沒太擔心香港人對我們的歧視，」他說。「畢竟香港都回歸了嘛。」

Hong Kong was supposed to maintain a high degree of autonomy for 50 years after its return to Chinese rule in 1997. The protests that engulfed the city in 2019 were aimed at preserving those freedoms, and ultimately failed. Signs of the city’s authoritarian turn now dot the urban landscape, from the billboards promoting National Security Education Day to the banners extolling the words of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.

香港是1997年回歸中國的，本該在回歸後保持50年的高度自治。2019年席捲香港的抗議活動本來是為了維護這些自由，但最終以失敗告終。香港轉向專制的跡象在這座城市現在到處可見，從宣傳國家安全教育日的廣告牌，到頌揚中國最高領導人習近平講話的橫幅。

Those changes have made Hong Kong more attractive to mainland visitors like Guo Xiuli, a 56-year-old retired state worker from the southern city of Chaozhou, who spent a recent morning taking photographs in Golden Bauhinia Square, a popular tourist site near the heart of the financial district.

這些變化已讓香港對內地遊客更有吸引力，比如來自南方城市潮州的退休公務員、現年56歲的郭秀麗（音），最近的一個上午她在靠近市中心金融區的熱門旅遊景點金紫荊廣場拍照。

Ms. Guo, who was not a member of a budget tour group, said she had been treated with more respect compared with her first visit to Hong Kong in 2004, when she felt that speaking Mandarin made her a target of bigotry.

郭女士參加的不是經濟型旅遊團。她說，與2004年第一次來香港相比，她這次受到了更多的尊重。那次來香港時，她覺得說普通話讓她成為偏見的對象。

“I used to feel rejection, indifference and impatience, especially when I spoke to waitresses or asked for directions on the streets,” said Ms. Guo, who dressed up for her photos in red velour heels and a face mask fashioned from lace and rhinestones.

「以前有那種排斥的感覺，尤其你講話、問路的時候愛理不理、不太耐煩，」郭女士說，她拍照片時穿著紅色絲絨高跟鞋，戴著用蕾絲和水鑽製成的口罩。

“I think it is because the mainland’s economy has developed,” she continued. “Hong Kong is not so special by comparison.”

「我覺得是因為大陸經濟發展起來了，」她繼續說道。「才顯得香港沒有那麼特別了。」