Courting the Chinese tourists in Beijing

We’ve already left Beijing, China and we’re on our way to the United States to attend a conference. But let me say it here once more that our opening a tourism office in Beijing is a step in the right direction. Tourism Secretary Roberto Pagdanganan clearly saw what the World Tourism Organization (WTO) revealed that in the next 10 to 15 years, outbound Chinese tourists would increase to some 130 million annually. Now if these new rich Chinese do not even know what the Philippines can offer, how can we expect our tourism industry to grab a chunk of that market? Even if we get only five percent of that market, that would sum up to more than a million Chinese tourists coming to our shores, and Cebu and the rest of the country should get a huge chunk of this business.

The last time I was in Beijing was in July of 1989, yes just a little over a month after the Tiananmen Square incident. We were only a few journalists, Nona Ocampo, Conrad Banal and Noel Cabrera, invited by the All China Journalist Association and I was the only one from Cebu. Actually, we were the first foreign journalists allowed after the Tiananmen incident. Back then, I could sense that China was on the verge of exploding… though not politically, but economically into the highly competitive globalized world market.

Fifteen years later, I only have praises for the remarkable economic growth of China, which I’d only been reading about in many magazines or news articles. Arriving in Beijing, I didn’t even recognize their international airport, and the road from the airport to the Kerry Centre Hotel in downtown Beijing is already a freeway, not the old two-lane road we passed before. Indeed, Beijing, in just 15 short years, has virtually caught up with the world’s greatest capital cities, New York, London, Tokyo or Paris.

No sir, Beijing is no longer what it used to be… looking like a Third World capital. So much has changed… I didn’t recognize any buildings from the past and guess what, they’re still in the middle of a construction boom! This is why scrap metal in Cebu has vanished and why our cement prices have skyrocketed… China is gobbling them up! There’s a frantic move to finish a lot of buildings in time for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Of course, no trip to Beijing would be complete unless you visit and see the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and that’s exactly what our group led by DOT regional director Dawnie Roa, Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. (CCCII) president Robert and Judy Go and Travelvision’s Jenny Franco did after the Embassy blessing. Yes, 15 years ago, we weren’t able to step inside Tiananmen Square for obvious reasons, but this time, you can go and frolic in the Square.

For a Wednesday, it was already crowded by local Chinese tourists. One can really feel the billion-strong Chinese population in Tiananmen Square alone. The lines to view the preserved body of Chairman Mao Zedong are so long, you’d think Mao just recently died and it was the official viewing of his body. No, this was an ordinary weekday and the guard told me "just wait till the weekend and you’ll see that those queues double!"

Inside the Forbidden City, nothing much has changed as this imperial relic of China’s past is best preserved and in fact that’s what they are doing. So much of it is undergoing preservation work; it really spoiled the view. We entered the Forbidden City from its back gate by the Hall of Imperial Peace, then through the Hall of Earthly Tranquility. As you walk your way into the inner sanctum of the Forbidden City, you’ll pass through the Hall of Union and Peace, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, the Hall of Central Harmony and the Hall of Preserved Harmony.

We viewed the Tian An Men (the Gate of Heavenly Peace where Chairman Mao waved the communist flag) from Tiananmen Square, not from the Forbidden City. While walking into China’s historic and ancient past, it got me into thinking that we should rename Congress as the Hall of Supreme Confusion and Malacañang the Palace of Political Enmity. Incidentally, this time, we didn’t have a chance to go outside the solid walls of the Forbidden City to see the residences of the Emperor’s concubines.

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Oftentimes, whenever we get to attend official government functions abroad, we bump into some old and new friends and I did bump into Dan Dia, former manager of Pagcor Cebu who is now in the Pavilion Hotel, Eric Baculinao, Beijing bureau chief of NBC News of USA who told me that CNN bureau chief Jaime Florcruz (whom we met long ago) was on holiday, otherwise he would have attended the affair. This is Pinoy media at its best!

The surprise of the night was when I suddenly got a tap on my back and you wouldn’t have guessed who it was… Diane Y. Fermin, director of communications of China World Hotel, another member of the Shangri-La chain of great hotels. Diane used to be in the PR department of the Cebu Plaza Hotel. The next day, she hosted Dawnie Roa, Jenny Franco and me to a suckling Peking duck lunch in her hotel and what a great time we had reminiscing the past.

Another person I met is Philippine Tourism Authority (PTA) general manager Dean Robert Barbers. Yes, we recently wrote a hot column about the PTA’s projects in Cebu in this corner and we published his deputy’s reaction to our article. Call it providential that I would meet Barbers in Beijing for we were able to discuss the issues plaguing the Kang-Irag Golf Course. He told me that the reason why this golf course project hasn’t yet been resolved is that it is still in the courts. Well, as the old saying goes, "Justice delayed is justice denied." We’ll write more about this again.

We also met Tina Castillo, director of sales and marketing of the Jianguo Hotel in Beijing, who showed us around, especially in Beijing’s market shops. The order of the day is for you to pit your bargaining skills against the Chinese shopkeeper and if you know how to do it, you get yourself a real bargain. The problem is there’s no way of telling who ends up laughing or who conned who!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.