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When Chinese seafarer and "Admiral of the Western Seas" Zheng He made landfall on Africa's east coast in the early 15th century, he took home a strange long-necked beast as a gift for his emperor.
Six centuries later, Chinese tourists are more likely to view the giraffe through the window of a luxury coach before stuffing their bags with carved ornaments and catching a plane home.
"Of course, he was the first person to introduce us to this country. Now there are more and more Zheng Hes," said Hendrick Zeng, a telecommunications engineer with Shenzhen-based ZTE Corp. who has spent the past four months living in a hotel in Somalia's war-ravaged capital Mogadishu, where Zheng first set foot in Africa.
"These days, the Chinese people are getting richer and richer. They want to go outside, they want to see what goes on outside China. This continent is so spacious ... there are wild life, wild animals and also, of course, business," he said.
Most of Zeng's compatriots in Mogadishu are, like him, on contracts installing telecommunications or other equipment.
But following Zheng's footsteps down Africa's east coast, more and more Chinese are coming as tourists, taking in the breathtaking scenery and game parks of Kenya, Zanzibar and South Africa thanks to the Chinese Government's gradual relaxation of travel rules and naming of African countries as approved destinations.
"Chinese tourism to Kenya is still relatively new ... but it is growing very fast," said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board.
With around 10,000 tourists a year to Kenya, China has a long way to go to catch up with Britain at 160,000 tourists and North America with 60,000, but in the ballooning Chinese tourist market, Kenya is holding its own.
"It is growing at 30 percent per annum, and Chinese tourism as a whole is growing at 30 percent per annum," said Grieves-Cook.
Continent-wide figures are hard to come by but South Africa saw Chinese arrivals soar 20 percent to more than 51,000 in 2004, making it one of its fastest-growing markets, with each visitor spending on average more than 9,750 rand (US$1,500).
A tiny proportion of Chinese have full passports allowing unfettered overseas travel. The rest are, in theory at least, subject to government control on which countries they visit for leisure purposes, and then only under the auspices of a State tourism body, making Chinese tourists a unique market.
"In London, if you are doing marketing, you talk to the travel agent. Here you talk to State institutions," said Manqoba Nyembezi, tourism attache in Beijing for South Africa, one of more than a dozen African countries to negotiate "approved destination status" in recent years.
Chinese tourism is very seasonal, with trips timed around Chinese New Year in January or February, May's Labor Day and China's Oct. 1 National Day, and most trips are planned at short notice meaning countries whose embassies in China can issue visas quickly stand to gain market share.
Added to that most Chinese travel in groups of 15 or more, usually with a guide, and often cram in two or three different countries to make the most of a trip.
"They are not so experienced, so they prefer to be escorted round, mainly with some element of Chinese language," said the Kenya Tourism Board's Grieves-Cook.
To meet that demand Kenya and South Africa are encouraging workers in the industry to take courses in Chinese languages, mainly Mandarin.
Zimbabwe is following suit, driven by President Robert Mugabe's "Look East" policy, designed to offset increasing Western isolation over the county's human rights record and policies like the seizure of land from white farmers.
Zimbabwe won approved destination status in June 2004 and in October that year recorded a 245 percent jump in arrivals from China. Air Zimbabwe has introduced twice-weekly flights to Beijing as part of efforts to boost tourism, although some critics say the route is uneconomical for the airline.
Not so for South African Airways (SAA) and Kenya Airways, which both have direct flights to Hong Kong — an asset they is essential to attracting Chinese tourists.
"Both Cathay (Pacific) and SAA find this one of their most lucrative routes," said South Africa's Nyembezi, who is talking to various other airlines about opening up new routes from other cities in China to South Africa.
Direct flights are a world away from the fleet of junks led by Zheng He, which took more than a year to make the round trip to Africa.
According to legend some of his sailors never made it home, shipwrecked off northern Kenya's Lamu archipelago.
To this day, visitors say there are traces of Zheng's sailors visible in the faces of some of the people on Pate island, which could help bring in new generations of Chinese visitors tracing their country’s travel history and foster an industry in what is now a tourism backwater.
"We've had some expressions of interest from Chinese people wanting to go there," said Grieves-Cook. "There are no flights there, no hotels there, maybe in the future.”
(Shenzhen Daily December 26, 2005)
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