China Travel Forum

[ILHAM]

Loosened travel restrictions and a booming economy mean that growing numbers of young Chinese have visas and cash to travel abroad as never before.

Lonely Planet, the producer of hundreds of guides to exotic spots, started publishing Chinese editions only last year. It sold out all 5,000 copies of its initial run of Chinese-language Europe guides within one month.

Lonely Planet is to recruit young Chinese backpackers to write guide books for Chinese travellers with special attention to their own likes-and-dislikes - such as finding a Chinese restaurant in Rome.

The number of overseas trips from China has soared over the past decade, with some 35 million trips in 2006, compared to just 620,000 trips in 1990, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.


Domestic tourism is also booming. Around 150 million people took to the road, rail and air during this year's "golden week" Labour Day holiday in May.

Independent travel and backpacking have become so popular that for the past five years Hu Deng, a professor at China's People's University, has taught China's only "Independent Travel" class.

His classes are always full and up to 500 students pack the auditorium, many of them standing, eager to learn how to survive tough-looking visa officers, unfamiliar foods and faces, and jostling for a cheap bed.

One industry that has benefited from this surge in travel is travel outfitting stores. The Wu Dao Kou area in Beijing's university district has seen an explosion in outdoor and travel related stores.

These stores stock everything from North Face backpacks to crampons for mountain climbing - or at least the cheap copies that China is notorious for. For some image-conscious young Chinese, having the right gear is essential.