Chinese Tourists - fast, cheap and and lots of them!

China is expected to become the world’s biggest exporter of tourists for the first time this year, with about 78 million Chinese expected to travel abroad in 2012, according to the World Tourism Organization. (In comparison, 64 million US tourists made trips abroad in 2010). 

The travel industry is keeping apace as best it can as hotels hire Mandarin speakers and countries invest millions in PR campaigns aimed at raising their profile in China.

Most of China’s outbound tourists travel as part of a tour group, in order to save money and tend to be older, with members of sightseeing groups having an average age of 39, according to research by Australia’s Tourism Board.

Reducing costs also means packing as much sightseeing as possible into a short period it’s not unusual to combine Scandinavia, Belgium and France in a single five day trip for example.

Places with a connection to Chinese history are proving especially popular with China’s outbound tourists. Karl Marx’s German birthplace, Trier, has seen an influx of Chinese visitors in recent years. In Japan, the search for Chinese culture draws tourists Kyoto, where visitors can chart the influence of classical Chinese architecture on the ancient capital.

While Chinese tourists may save on food and hotels, they show less restraint when it comes to shopping as it is customary to return with gifts for family and friends who expect to receive brand-name electronics, clothing and cosmetics, (which are often cheaper abroad due to Chinese import taxes). Chinese tourists set aside over a third of their vacation budget for shopping, according to a 2008 study by the European Travel Commission.

Chinese tourist spending has been a boost to Japan’s ailing economy. Japan attracted over a million Chinese tourists last year, around twice the number of US visitors to the country, and Chinese visitors to Japan spend more than twice as much as British or US tourists, according to the Japan Tourism Agency.  The country’s tourism ministry hopes to boost the number of Chinese visitors to 6 million by 2020, and has already relaxed visa restrictions for Chinese travellers.

The New Great Game: The Battle for Africa

The 'Great Game' was a term used to describe the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia (mostly Afghanistan!) between 1813 and 1907. It was first commonly used by Rudyard Kipling in his novel 'Kim'.

There now seems there is a new Great Game; the battle for African Energy Resources.

India took a leap in Africa on Tuesday, with Prime Minister Singh pledging $5 billion for the Africa's development over the next three years. Spreading out the Indian presence from agriculture to information technology, and medicine to a virtual university, India now rivals China for top honours in the new Great Game in Africa!

India will offer $5 billion dollars for the next three years under lines of credit to help Africa achievesome of its development goals. (To put the figure in perspective, India's healthcare budget is around $ 5.9 billion). This credit would be apart from the $700 million pledged for new institutions in Africa.

India also announced a railway line between Ethiopia and Djibouti at a cost of $300 million. The initial plan by the Africa Union was for a line running across the breadth of Africa, but the task of coordinating land acquisition through so many sovereign states was a challenge they weren't willing to take on (just yet).

China has the biggest presence in Africa, constructing airport terminals and football stadiums at a breathtaking pace, in return for access to resources and minerals. Its bilateral trade with Africa in 2010 was $126.9 billion, as compared to just over $40 billion India-Africa trade. Earlier this week, India declared a target of $70 billion by 2015.

India has had a long-standing relationship with African countries, particularly on the eastern seaboard, but it took a backseat when China went into Africa with deep pockets and insatiable demand for energy and resources.

Since then, India has been playing catch-up, although India prides itself on doing things differently from China. It's 'Sort Power' approach sees itself as less extractive in its engagements and more inclined towards helping African countries improve their capacity. As a senior African diplomat observed, "China invests in our today, India in our tomorrow."

African nations are not unhappy at being the centre of attention and largesse by India and China. Although China is more efficient in the way it processes aid in Africa, India has been actively invited by African leaders themselves as they seek to balance the Chinese presence.

The Indian presence is also mainly in the private sector, unlike the state-driven presence of China. This makes the Indian engagement far less threatening in Africa. Having said that, Indian companies are increasingly getting into mining for coal, copper and more industrial-use metals in different African countries. Indian farmers are engaging in commercial farming in countries like Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. In a recent agreement, Andhra Pradesh will send 500 farmers to become farming entrepreneurs in these countries.

PM Singh declared that India would invite all African airlines to Indian cities over the next three years. That's because no Indian airline now flies to Africa even as Chinese airlines are increasing their flights to the continent. Yet..

Womens Army shows the way for Red Tourists

On July 1st, on the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party operators throughout China are creating a selection of cultural and commemorative "red" tours.

On the island province of Hainan, visitors can travel to rural Qionghai, to visit Pan Xianying, mother of seven, and now nearly a 100 yrs old, and one of three remaining members of a famed Communist all-women army unit in China and a living attraction on a "red" tour of the southern island province of Hainan.

Pan was about 15 when she joined the unit in 1931; the battalion was formed by a Hainanese Communist to promote gender equality. It was created to protect party leaders and fight rival Nationalist forces during China's civil war, the unit and composed of 140 women. The unit was disbanded after several years, when Nationalist forces drove local Communists underground. But its members were hailed as heroines after Mao Zedong's victorious forces took over China in 1949 and the unit has since inspired a popular ballet, The Red Detachment of Women, and several films.

Local authorities in the rural community of Qionghai decided to capitalise on the detachment's fame this year with tours of its former training grounds and meeting spots. The tours attracted 360 people in April, some coming as part of events organised by their employers, others independently. Besides old revolutionary sites -- one of them just a bare field where influential communists once met long ago -- outdoor sports such as hiking are also on offer.

The hikes are billed as instilling army-style camaraderie among tour members and follow a route that Red Army soldiers are said to have struggled through. The tour guides sport revolutionary-style green caps complete with a red star, which visitors can buy for 10 yuan. They can also choose to wear a full soldier's uniform for 100 yuan.

'Red' tourism is not new in China, where the party has deftly managed to keep alive memories of the communist revolution even as it has transformed the country into an economic powerhouse. The Hunan province city of Shaoshan where Mao was born and the longtime Communist base of Yan'an in Shaanxi province are already star attractions.

But the trend is gaining ground. In the southwestern city of Chongqing, authorities have ordered state radio and television to promote the mass study of "red songs" praising the Communist Party. Citizens are being urged to download tunes from websites, while newspapers print their lyrics, state media reported. Other cities have made similar moves.

Chen Doushu, head of the agency organising the tours, said red tourism reflects a desire by many to look fondly back at the past after more than 30 years of focus on the future during China's rapid recent modernisation.

"Chinese people cannot forget their history, and the best way to do that is to go and remember it, to study it. That's where red tourism comes from," he said.

# 23 Hong Kong Wing Chun

Watch out when you fly Hong Kong Airlines, it seems the airline is making all its cabin crew take kung fu lessons to help them to deal with drunk and unruly passengers.

Hong Kong Airlines said all staff had been invited to undergo training in wing chun - a form of kung fu used in close-range combat - but it was only compulsory for cabin crew, the Sunday Morning Post reported.

The airline had around three incidents involving disruptive passengers every week, said Eva Chan, the carrier's deputy general manager of corporate communication.

Two weeks ago a crew member had to put her martial arts training into practice on a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong.

"One of the passengers was sick but he was probably drunk and felt unwell. The crew member attended to him and she realised her fitness was helping her, especially because the guy was quite heavy," Chan told the newspaper.

Normally, a female cabin crew can't handle a fat guy, especially if he's drunk, but because of the training, she can handle it quite easily."

Wing chun instructor Katherine Cheung said the martial art was ideal for airline crews.

"Wing chun can be used in small, confined spaces so it's suited for an airplane," Cheung said. "It's easy to learn but difficult to master.

The Guardian offers some pictures of the kind of moves the wing-chun-trained cabin crew could be using at 36,000 feet.

Oh, and here's Bruce Lee offering his version

India, China, Demographics, Distribution & Consumption Patterns.

The recent PATA 60th anniversary and conference event held at the China World Hotel, Beijing, threw up some interesting sessions on distribution challenges and changing demographics.

Attention was drawn to the huge process of urbanization taking place in both India and China.

Within the next 15 years, China would create cities equal to the size of most in Europe and India was planning to create 115 new airports.

This expansion will see massive increases in the numbers of Indians and Chinese willing, and able, to travel, leading to a major shift in global consumption patterns - even today the average Indian traveling in the U.K spends £792 a week compared to the average American spend in the U.K. of £710 a week.

With 70% of the Indian population under the age of 35, distribution trends will focus on increased marketing through social media and mobile access, while #trending enables industry players to have real-time feedback from consumers, shaping demand, supply, delivery, service, policy and direction.

With a predicted future shortage of skilled workers globally, there is also a real opportunity for India and China.

While in the past, the best hotel chains in India and China would hire expatriates, there will now be a reversal in this trend with the Ritz-Carlton’s and Four Seasons’ turning to India and China for their skilled management.

At the same time Boeing claimed that aviation was going to require training to support the growth in the sector with 126,000 new pilots and a quarter million mechanics need to be recruited and trained!

The Most Difficult Languages to Speak??

I'm proud that I can get by in a few languages, French, German, Spanish and some would say English (I'm from Yorkshire.!) - but here's a recent list I read of the most difficult languages for English speakers to get to grips with..


1. Arabic

Arabic breaks down into families. One is the Modern Standard Arabic of print, media, and online content. The other is spoken Arabic, which encompasses many colloquial dialects which vary by region. This means that if you pick up conversational Arabic in Tunisia, it might still be tough to be understood in Kuwait.

For all dialects of Arabic, pronunciation is difficult for English speakers, as many consonants are formed at the back of the mouth.

Arabic script is a phonetic, 28-symbol alphabet descending from Phonecian. Most letters change shape depending on their position in the word, and letters may or may not be joined. The most basic challenge in tackling written Arabic is in reading from right to left, working against an English speaker’s deeply embedded instinct.

Arabic grammar has very few parallels with English and Indo-European languages. The plural is expressed by changing the vowel structure of the word: kitab (book) becomes kutub (books). The bulk of verbs are irregular and can be formed 25 ways. It’s a logical grammar system, but a complicated one too.

2. Basque

In a study conducted by the British Foreign Office, Basque was ranked as the hardest language to learn. Geographically surrounded by Romance languages, it is one of the only language isolates of Europe, with no syntactic parallels to English. The regional dialects are highly diverged, though a standardized Basque is used for media and academics.

Basque is agglutinative, meaning that words are formed and modified with prefixes and suffixes. While “law” is lege in Basque, the phrase “according to the law” would be structured by suffixes as “legearen arabera.” Instead of prepositions, Basque uses cases endings to show the relationship between words, such as mendi (mountain) and mendira (to the mountain). It sounds simple, but with eleven cases, each taking four forms, the grammar is complex.

Basque is written in the Roman alphabet and pronunciation is fairly easy, even with new consonant sounds like tx or tz.

3. Cantonese

Cantonese is a tonal language, which is challenging for English speakers who are used to speaking with emphasis (“I didn’t eat YOUR sandwich!”) and inflection, rising tones to pose a question. Cantonese can be difficult even for those fluent in other Chinese dialects because of its tonal system. While Mandarin has four tones, Cantonese has eight, with pitch and contour shaping a syllable’s meaning.

Chinese has a logographic (pictoral) writing system of 5000+ characters. This presents a new hurtle to language learning, since a reader of Cantonese can’t sound out syllables in a text as we can with phonetic alphabets. They must know and recall the name of each character.


4. Finnish

Finnish is in the Finno-Ugric language family, with Estonian and Hungarian. Without Germanic or Latin influence, Finnish vocabulary is completely alien to English speakers. Its grammar is also somewhat notorious. There are fifteen noun cases, sometimes with subtle differences. Talotta means “without a house,” while talolta means “from a house.” Tricky.

There are six verb types, classed by their stems. These stems alter as the verbs are conjugated. The language is agglutinative and verbs are conjugated with a succession of suffixes.

But, Finnish is written as it sounds (in the Roman alphabet), and pronunciation is comfortable for English speakers. A common speaking problem lies in remembering single or double vowel sounds, as in tuli (fire) and tuuli (wind).

5. Hungarian

Though it uses the Roman alphabet for writing, Hungarian is tricky. Unique vowel sounds (á,é,ó,ö,ő,ú,ü,ű,í) and consonant clusters (ty, gy, ny, sz, zs, dzs, dz, ly, cs) make it difficult for English tongues to read and pronounce Hungarian.

Instead of articles, Hungarian conjugates verbs in one of two ways for definite and indefinite objects. Olvasok könyvet means “I read a book,” while Olvasom a könvyet is “I read the book.”

Because possession, tense, and number are indicated by suffixes, not word order in a sentence, Hungarian sentence structure is very loose and flexible. Sounds forgiving for a novice speaker, huh? The truth is that any sentence can take on several meanings if the suffixes are altered slightly. It’s a confusing system to learn.


6. Japanese

The good news is that pronunciation is easy. Japanese vowel and consonant sounds are familiar to those fluent in English, which makes the language easy to parrot and understand.

But written Japanese can be a headache to learn. It uses four alphabets including the Chinese-influenced kanji (pictoral), two phonetic writing systems, and the Roman alphabet (Romanji).

The notion of honorific language is challenging for learners. Japanese speech can vary with levels of politeness, with each level having set forms and rules. English has no set way of speaking honorifically or intimately, and learners may have trouble recalling when and where to use honorific speech.

Grammatically, Japanese is a mixed bag. There are only three irregular verbs and a pretty consistent structure, with verbs at the end of the sentence. Nouns carry no gender or number, though they can function as adjectives or adverbs, which can be confusing for readers.


7. Navajo

The Navajo language was used as a code by US forces in World War Two. In the Pacific battles, Japanese codebreakers cracked other allied dialects and coded language. They could never decipher Navajo.

Navajo is a verb-centred language. Even adjectives have no direct translation into Navajo; descriptions are given through verbs. It’s a prefix-heavy language, with 25 kinds of pronominal prefixes which can be stacked onto one another. This forms incredibly long phrases like chidí naaʼnaʼí beeʼeldǫǫhtsoh bikááʼ dah naaznilígíí which means “army tank.”

Another feature unique to Navajo is animacy, wherein nouns will take on certain verbs according to their rank in the hierarchy of animation. Humans and lightning are highest, children and big animals come next, and abstractions sit at the bottom. It’s a fascinating aspect of the language and culture, but a tough one to memorize and put into practice.


8. Mandarin

Written Mandarin is pictoral and contains over 20,000 characters. Some base characters, like root words, appear in other symbols, like (the character for “woman” forming part of “sister.” The written form of the language has no phonic connection to the spoken form.

Mandarin, like Cantonese, is a tonal language, and a misused inflection can change the meaning of a sentence. The syllable “ma” can mean mother or horse, depending on the inflection!

Grammatically, Mandarin is easy than some Indo-European languages. Words, for the most part, have only one grammatical form. Their function is shown through prepositions, word order and particles. Building and comprehending this syntax, however, takes time. There are some tough elements like Mandarin adverbs: a dozen words which have no direct English translation.

9. Korean

At first, the language seems far easier than other East Asian tongues. No tones! No pictoral writing system!

It’s true that reading and writing in Korean is easy to master, as the language uses the very logical Hangul phonetic written system. Speaking and listening, while tone-free, can be challenging with unique sounds that are hard for English speakers to recognize, let alone master.

The biggest challenge with Korean lies in the grammar. Verbs can be conjugated hundreds of ways, depending on tense, mood, age and seniority.

Like Japanese, one sentence can be said in three different ways, depending on the relationship between the speaker and addressee. Adjectives are conjugated too, with hundreds of possible endings. Also, there are also two different number systems, quite different from one another.

If anyone else has any suggestions, I'd like to know...what about Hindu???