China's travel revolution ripples across globe
Middle-class citizens heading in droves to visit Western countries
By JOHN LEICESTER
Associated Press
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 Fontainebleau, where Napoleon luxuriated between military campaigns.
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She'd 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 tranquility.
"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."
Nations once inaccessible
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 cell phones, 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.
Girding for tourism surge
Europe is bracing for a Chinese surge following a tourism pact that simplifies visa procedures for Chinese tour groups and allows Chinese travel agents to advertise European destinations.
The impact of the agreement, which went into effect on Sept. 1, promises to be dramatic: France, the world's top tourist destination, expects to attract as many as 1.5 million Chinese next year, from the estimated 300,000 to 400,000 who visited in 2003.
Through travel, Chinese are learning about the world, themselves and their country, and teaching the world a little about China and its march to modernity.
Poverty, history, culture and politics long conspired to delay the advent of mass Chinese tourism, whose effects are now being felt from Paris to Auckland, Las Vegas to Sydney.
As recently as 15 years ago, when cheaper air travel was unlocking the world to Western tourists, the few coming from China were mostly state representatives and people with relatives overseas.
For most Chinese, life beyond the Great Wall was glimpsed largely through the prism of television and other media all controlled by a Communist Party long suspicious of the West.
Capitalist reforms and stunning economic growth have brought skiing in South Korea, golfing in Nevada, shopping in Tokyo and dining in France within reach of millions of middle-class Chinese.
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They still call China "Zhongguo," the Middle Kingdom, center of the world. But as well as cars and IKEA furniture, they want albums of souvenir photos from overseas and are the targets of ads like this one in the Shanghai Morning Post: "Seclusion in a castle, in the forest, in a log cabin. Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg. Eight Days for Five European Countries for under 10,000 yuan!"
That's $1,210, roughly what Hu Jie likely paid for the Japanese camera with which he shot photos at Fontainebleau. A manager with a Chinese air conditioning firm, he's an experienced traveler, having previously worked in France. He led the group of 22 people that included Chen, the engineer.
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 Chinese a market 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.
chron.com
The US has missed the boat till now due to its stupid visa policy!
BTW, "Zhongguo," means "Middle of the world", it does not mean "the Middle Kingdom", or, "center of the world". Zhong, here, merely refers to its geographic location, NOT "center", which has other indications than location. Such know-nothing reporters! |
