Mark Gibson

Tourism at the temple

Posted on April 29th, 2007 by mark.
Categories: General News, Travelogue, China 2007.

Tourism at the temple
The temple and its surrounding area is quite beautiful and the first visit there in the morning had only a few people passing through and we saw more monks than tourists. On a later visit I was there during Wu Yi Jie a week long national holiday. During this time 50,000 people a day visited the temple many of them walking the 1Km from the main gate complex at the entrance to the “Shaolin Scenic Area”. I did try walking in the opposite direction to the main flow of traffic which proved a little interesting as it was very much like swimming against a strong current, there were so many people heading towards the temple it was almost impossible to leave.
The vast majority of tourists in China are Chinese of course, as it can be harder for them to travel abroad than visit other parts of their own country, so over the last 30 years the internal travel industry has grown into a massve operation. In the time I was there the number of westerners I could have counted on one hand. Everywhere I went I drew the usual sort of stares you get in any areas that you don’t see many white faces however this was amplified by the sheer number of Chinese tourists, 50,000 people a day were staring at the weiguoren! I was hailed by the cry of “Hello Laowei!” (sort of hello honoured foreigner) and in one case by a startled 5 year old staring up at me in amazement “bu shi zhongguoren!” (you’re not Chinese). The adults tended to look a bit surprised, occasionally smiled and nudged each other to make sure everyone in the party had seen the big nose but it was usually the kids who tried out their one word of English. In Deng Feng when stopping at a chemist (don’t ask!) three young kids about six years old who where amusingly sitting on the door step sharpening the families large cooking knife on a whet stone, managed after a lot of whispering and nudging each other to ask me my name in English. During the time I was here I only came across one person who spoke English who was checking into the Hotel as I was asking in my best mandarin whether I could use their internet connection, I have been told by independent observers that my pronunciation of “internet bar” leaves something to be desired as a slight tonal variation turns it into “turtles egg”, which for reasons no one seems to be able to tell me is some sort of deadly insult!

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