I had expected to see a big number of visitors coming to Beijing to see the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube during the golden week, but I was still shocked. According to China Daily article “Holiday proves golden for tourism” - The Olympic Green, home to the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube, attracted 2.17 million visitors during the first six days of the holiday.

Photo Source: xinhuanet.com

I guess that for a country of 1.3 billion population, a mere 0.17% is a huge number after all.

Now, question for you, how many percent of people in China do you need to attract to come patron your business here in the US to give a boost in your revenue?

Tags: Chinese Tourism by Lin Chen
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October 1st is the National Day in mainland China. To promote tourism, Chinese government has made this into a week-long break. It doesn’t mean that all businesses are giving their employees that many vacation days though. In most cases, the true holiday is still only three days, but the weekends before and after are “moved” so all together people have 7 days of vacation time. This week is called “Golden Week”. (If you do business with China, you might have hard time finding anybody during this week. So better plan for that.)

During the golden week of 2008, around 56,000 Chinese tourists traveled abroad, according to statistics released by the Beijing General Station of Exit and Entry Frontier Inspection.

Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Macao are still the top choices for Chinese residents and attracted about 23,000 mainland tourists during the week-long holiday.

In addition, domestic tourism saw significant increase as well. The number of tourists to Beijing rose 35% compared to the same period of last year, mainly because of recent successful Olympics.

Source: http://www.chinaknowledge.com/News/news-detail.aspx?type=1&id=17967

Tags: Chinese Tourism by Lin Chen
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Carrying a print-out page with a picture and model number of a cute gold color handbag, Jane (my Chinese girl friend who came to the US for her 10-day vacation) walked in to the Coach store in Oak Brook Shopping Center. This was a request from her cousin - “I really like this color. If not this size, a little bigger is fine.” Luckily, this cute handbag is in stock so this task is completed in no time. Jane used her visa card to pay for the item.

Jane was my best friend in college. A remarkable young woman running an investment firm in Shanghai. She has been wanting to come visit US but visa has always been a concern.  This year she finally was able to came, benefiting from a recent agreement between China and US facilitating tourists coming to the US.

Her 10-day trip included four cities: NYC, DC, Chicago and Boston. Besides sight-seeing, she was also tasked with getting a few items for her friends and relatives. The coach bag was an easy one. We next went off to buy a La Mer eye cream. I took her to Neiman Marcus where the September Beauty Event was on-going. On her piece of paper with a photo of the eye cream, she also had two other prices, one was the Internet price if to order directly in China, another one was the price at a duty-free store in Korean airport. With the 8% shopping tax, the price at Neiman Marcus came out higher than both other prices. So Jane decided to take a pass.

On our way out to the parking lot, we stopped at the Tiffany’s to take a look.The classic movie by Audrey Hapburn has given everyone such romantic impression of this store that it’s impossible to pass by without walking in. 30 minutes later, Jane walked out with a satisfied beam on her face, carring two beautiful sterling silver necklaces in the green boxes with white ribbons.

It was a joy to see my friend after so many years. Also a fascinating experience to see how fast China is moving forward and people are catching up with the rest of the world.

Tags: Chinese Tourism, Shopping by Lin Chen
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