The paradox of tourism in China is that despite an unforgettable range of attractions, the country is a frustrating destination for foreign tourists. There are other contradictions. The tourist infrastructure is good (hotels, restaurants, and transport network), but not readily accessible; the people are inquisitive and hospitable, but the country remains aloof and inscrutable for most foreigners.
Among the reasons for these dichotomies, the biggest is the inability of most people who work in tourism to speak English. It's a vexing situation, when you cannot communicate with your client.
I know that this is old news, and that things are changing; students are learning English from younger age and for longer, and tourism authorities are eager to foster English proficiency among tourism service providers.
But I'm reiterating this news here because in the course of my work - travel writing - I can see that most tourism departments can do more to dismantle the language barrier in the short term by some direct measures that could yield immediate economic gains.
I'll discuss these later; first, let me illustrate how this dispirits foreign tourists, costing China potential gains – the language barrier is one of the main reasons why the number of foreign visitors remains relatively low compared to the diversity and size of the country.
For a non-Chinese speaker, something as simple as finding and buying a ticket for an internal flight, or figuring out which bus goes to where and then getting to the bus station, becomes a complex multi-hour task, like playing treasure hunt.
Or let's say a foreigner goes to a restaurant to eat, and, finding no English menu, is forced to make his choices in either one of two ways: either point at pictures of dishes on the menu, or go inside the kitchen and point out the individual ingredients.
Both ways lead to hits and misses; pictures don't always reveal the type of meat in the dish, or whether a dish is spicy or sour or sweet, so the diner is likely to end up with something he doesn't like – perhaps intestines or pig's ears, or another foodstuff that's a delicacy for Chinese but distasteful for most foreigners. And if a foreigner points out the ingredients, he still has no influence on how the ingredients are cooked and what they are mixed with.
This is one example of how China remains distant: China has great food, but foreigners end up with dishes that don't impress them because they have no way of ordering what they like.
