| It is an interesting phenomenon, but I'd say how different genres and how the Chinese novelist approach these genres has a greater effect on the outcome. Most times you reason from effect to cause to see why. So typical Chinese fantasy/ high-level Wuxia/ Xianxia goes
protag need resources -> need lots with no strings -> a failing pocket dimension to exploit! -> maybe discovered through conflict / treasure map / etc. Why though? Think of them as a one-time map in an RPG or something, where you access once for some material/etc. but can never revisit. As for the behavior of that bunch of Chinese tourists, I would say that wasting was an issue in the recent generations (but won't be in the next generation), due to a number of factors such as the abundance of food on the market and in restaurant, hospitality (by providing more-than-can-eat), showoff (by providing extraordinary amount of food), corruption (government paid for, no need to hold back), etc. However, the fight against corruption in recent years and recently passed laws that prohibit display in public and in video of wasting food would mean that the next generation growing up would have a different standard of what should be considered as waste. Similarly, those growing up in the 70s-90s that had experience of a lack of food variety and amount, would either be very harsh on any waste of food, or would be overly lenient on wasting food. As to the theory that this behavior came from memories of grandparents that experienced the famines, I'd say it's stretching it. There's too many variables that would affect the amount of influence, especially if the grandparents weren't around to educate about not wasting food. And if the grandparents didn't educate correctly, it could even cause a backlash. |