Tourists pose for a pic in the lobby of 1100 Wilson Boulevard.

We’ve all been there. You’re innocently walking around downtown or a well-known shopping destination like the Pentagon City mall, and you run right smack into a group of tourists. It’s inevitable in our prominent city, especially in the summer.

But being cornered by a similar such formidable group in your office lobby? That’s something that those of us at TBD who just moved in to 1100 Wilson Boulevard in Rosslyn, even those of us who have lived in D.C. for a while, did not expect.

Yet there they are. Busloads of tour groups from China, Thailand, Vietnam, even Canada, smiling and snapping photos, hungrily buying up cheap souvenirs in the newsstand in the lobby (most of which are also from China), and eating at the China Garden restaurant.

On Mondays and Fridays especially, there are sometimes 10 different groups that come through during the lunch and dinner hours. Were they visiting Freedom Park? Was the building in Rosslyn a natural stopping point between D.C. and a visit to the Arlington National Cemetery?

At that point, we started conspiracy-theorizing. Is the tour company somehow affiliated with China Garden? Are the operation of tours, the restaurant, and the souvenir shop downstairs actually three separate arms of a giant, brilliant business model?

By all accounts, the answer is no. (So much for that theory.)

Peter Tran, manager of China Garden, says there is no such affiliation that he knows of. The tour guides usually talk amongst themselves while they are waiting for groups, and share tips about places that have enough space to handle a big group.

Then they call and see if there is space at the restaurant. Tran says that China Garden will turn away buses if there’s not enough room to accommodate them and the restaurant’s other clientele. “It’s a very low-profit business,” he said of the tours. “If we have enough business coming in from our regular customers, we take care of that first.”

The low cost of food is a consideration in bringing people to the building, says Jason Lee, a tour guide hovering outside 1100 Wilson, keeping an eye on his patrons haggling with an impromptu four-for-$10 t-shirt stand that had appeared on the sidewalk.

“We bring them to the food courts in D.C., and sometimes they think it’s a little expensive,” Lee said. “Plus a lot of them are Chinese so we found a Chinese restaurant.”

So the Chinese tour groups come to the United States to go to a Chinese restaurant. Really? Richard Li, visiting from Hong Kong, laughed about it, but said the food was very good -- and affordable -- at China Garden.

His son, however, didn’t agree. “It’s weird,” he said. “I want McDonalds ... or KFC.”

“You can have that in Hong Kong,” his father retorted.

When they are done eating, Nancy Lim in the store on the ground floor of the building stands at the ready. Although its sign reads “newsstand,” her biggest sales are in the plastic models of the Capitol, patriotic ties and various other red, white and blue tchotchkes that fill her store.

She often does go up to visit China Garden to check how many buses are coming that day, she says. If they’re coming for dinner, she also often stays open late. “I’m supposed to close at eight, but on Mondays and Fridays, I can’t, because I don’t want to miss the business,” she said. “I stay open until everybody leaves, maybe nine or 10.”

Even though us newbies here at TBD find the volume of tours staggering, Lim and Tran say it’s far less than it used to be. There were as many as 15 buses coming through on a given day a couple of years ago. Sheesh.