Asian narratives of holiday trips

I went on a day trip to NYC yesterday, organized (and sponsored! :) ) by the MIT Singapore program. It was both a very enjoyable and, in many ways, enlightening experience. The most fascinating thing for me, however, was how my Chinese friend and fellow MIT student Ting I explored the city with made sense of what she saw.
I always wanted to understand the logic behind Asian people taking holiday pictures like the one above and I think I'm getting closer :)
I learned e.g. that the motif has to be "meaningful", i.e. capture an essential element of the place. Furthermore, buildings usually should be on the photo in total, even if that means shooting from a totally improbable angle. There are, however, some exceptions to that rule, e.g. if the "meaningful" part of it has to be in the center and doesn't allow for the whole building being captured. There are also immensely complex rules for the spatial relationship between the person being on the picture and the place/thing being photographed; sometimes the person should be in the center but with some buildings, especially higher, tower-shaped ones, the person should frame the building, either on the left or on the right side.
The selection of what should be photographed and what is desirable but optional is yet another, even more complex topic.
There is so much underlying narrative stuffed into the resulting holiday photos (like the one above), of an ongoing struggle between how we expect a city to be and the 'material' we encounter to take our pictures of.
Ting, if you read this, I really enjoyed our trip and I'd certainly want to do it again, not only for understanding the 'missing parts' ;-)
Warm greetings from snowy Cambridge,

Stefan