Tips for touring US: Watch whales, kick butt

By John Gong  |   2008-6-25  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

Illustration by Zhou Tao More in cartoon gallery

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TOURISTS from China are finally free to go to the "land of the free.''

After years of negotiation, Washington finally agreed for the United States to be "approved destination status'' as part of the 14-point China-US trade agreement signed in Beijing last year.

The first group of some 200 tourists arrived in the US last week. Their itinerary included a Washington riverfront reception hosted by US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

International tourism is big business in China, with 34 million people traveling overseas in 2006.

It is also the single most stunning growth phenomenon in the global tourism industry. Now opening the floodgate for the traffic to flow the other way around across the Pacific is a much-needed Viagra prescription for the sinking dollar.

According to Wang Zhifa, vice chairman of the China National Tourism Assn, Chinese tourists would spend US$100 billion on overseas travel by 2015, an amount that will surely help ease Sino-US trade frictions.

For the ladies and gentlemen ready to land on American soil, some advice is called for.

I will not talk about the cliches of Chinese tourists talking loudly, jumping queues or other raucous actions, a myth in my opinion propagated by some CNN-type Western media.

To the good-mannered and well-heeled Chinese middle class, I would like to offer a 10-point list of advice that you may want to consider before boarding an eastbound airliner:

1. Do not go now! Your trip will cost a lot less, if you will just wait for the recovery of your investment in the Shanghai stock market.

The speed at which Uncle Sam's paper depreciates is measured in days. But what you will see in America hardly changes.

Compared to China, the country moves at a snail's pace. For example, every year I come back to Shanghai to see a different city.