<<Chinese in travel revolution>>
Several interesting observations in the article.
John Leicester
Associated Press
Oct. 31, 2004 12:00 AM
FONTAINEBLEAU, France - After the whirl of rush-hour traffic, stops for snapshots and a meal of rice, soup and fatty pork, Chen Guolin finally got to relax in the verdant gardens of Chateau de Fontainebleau, where Napoleon luxuriated between military campaigns.
She had been touched, she said, by the almost accentless "ni hao" - hello in Chinese - with which French ground staff welcomed her at Charles de Gaulle airport when her group arrived the previous evening. And she marveled at Fontainebleau's tranquillity.
"If this was China, there would be people everywhere," she said.
Above all, her first day ever outside China had taught her a lesson: Just seeing Paris, first stop on a 15-day swing through France and Spain, confirmed to her that her homeland is on the rise.
"I really don't feel as if there's any difference between the outside world and China," said Chen, a construction engineer. "Seeing overseas makes you love your country even more."
Trip by trip, a Chinese tourism revolution is doing as much as diplomacy and billions of dollars of trade to build bridges between China and the West.
Armed with digital cameras and videocams and still connected to home by their cellphones, Chinese with a pent-up hunger for fresh experiences, cultures and shopping are heading in droves to countries that a few decades back were as inaccessible to most of them as the moon.
Last year, Chinese for the first time overtook Japanese as Asia's biggest travelers, making 20.2 million visits, China's tourism administration says.
Capitalist reforms and stunning economic growth have brought skiing in Korea, golfing in Nevada, shopping in Tokyo and dining in France within reach of millions of middle-class Chinese.
By 2020, the World Tourism Organization predicts, Chinese will be the world's fourth-most prolific travelers, taking 100 million trips, trailing the United States, Germany and Japan, which is expected to make a tourism comeback after a four-year slump.
That makes the Chinese a market that tourism officials and hoteliers cannot ignore.
"Their economy, their wealth, their ability and their inclination to travel is very, very strong," Bruce Bommarito, executive director of the Nevada Commission on Tourism, said in a telephone interview. He has spent 18 months learning basic Chinese: "It's very important that we stay at the top of the curve," he said.
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