China, one of the Four Great Ancient Civilizations, is the country with long history and splendid civilization, which attracts more and more people all over the world to visit China and have a taste of Chinese culture. Cultural tourism, a new orientation of Chinese tourist industry, has the broad space for development in the future.

A few days ago, the Third Beijing International Cultural & Creative Industry Expo was held in Beijing. In the Expo, the famous cultural scenic spot, Lao She Teahouse, brought various cultural activities, such as the Chinese tea ceremony, the traditional Beijing snacks taste and so on. Their featured activity is "Dispelling Cold Season". "Many people took a special trip to take part in the dispelling cold activities", said Yang Xinyu, the assistant general manager of Beijing Lao She Teahouse Co, Ltd., "The guests will be tired if they always have tea and chat and the performances are unchanged. So only bringing the fresh air to the guests by exploring featured project, which is combined with cultural creation, can be attracted to the guests."

The cultural factors involved in the cultural tourism are not only the traditional culture, but also the fashion ones.

Since Beijing succeeded in Olympics bidding in 2001, Beijing Olympic Games has become the strongest power to the development of Beijing tourist industry. During the seven years, Beijing tourism has developed extraordinarily. From 2001 to 2007, the cumulative growth rate of Beijing inbound tourists is 52%, getting to 4.36 million person-time; the foreign exchange earnings from tourism cumulatively increase 55.3%, getting to 4.58 billion dollars; the domestic tourists cumulatively increase 30%, getting to 0.143 billion person-time; the domestic earnings from tourism cumulatively increase 98%, getting to 175.4 billion yuan; the total earnings from tourism cumulatively increase 86%, getting to 210.3 billion yuan. At present, the annual added value of Beijing tourist industry accounts for 6.9% of Beijing GDP, and it plays an important role in the capital economic development.

The contribution of Olympic factors to the Beijing tourism is more obvious after the successful hosting of Beijing Olympic Games. According to the statistics, in the golden week of this National Day, the number of tourists in Beijing reaches 8.02 million person-time, increasing 35% compared with the same period of the last year. The power is stronger especially in the Olympic Park, one of the hottest tourism regions, which 2.42 million people visited during the golden week, and the maximum visitor number in one day breaks 0.52 million person-time.

"The pulling effect will last. According to the international practice, the Olympic tourism marketing will last eleven years. The former period of seven years is from Olympic bidding success to the Olympic Games, and the latter period of four years is from this Olympic Games to the next one", said Li Geng, the vice chairman of Beijing Olympic Economy Research Association, "Beijing is successful during the former period, and in the latter period, we'll take occasion to promote more and better cultural tourism products."

In addition, Beijing encourages the city zone to open up the history and culture tourism zone, which is mostly concentrated in old houses of celebrity, lanes and traditional blocks, and take advantage of households, courtyards and streets to develop international tourism regions and promote a series of Beijing cultural tourism products.

Besides new cultural tourism projects, the extension of cultural tourism industrial chain is also the key of cultural tourism.

According to Gu Xiaoyuan, the vice director of the Beijing Tourism Administration, the development direction of Beijing cultural and creative tourist industry covers creative tourism merchandises, tourism cultural performance and the creative tourism products of travel agencies.

Take an example of creative tourism merchandises. There're more than 5000 kinds of chartered Olympics merchandises of this Olympic Games, including plush toy, mobile chain, jewelry and so on, which are favored by the tourists. In the future, Beijing will set up "Beijing Gifts" stores on the scenic spots and build ??Beijing Gifts?? brand. In 2009, the stores aim at covering all the scenic spots of which level is higher than 3A, to promote the branding and chaining development of Beijing tourism merchandises.

In the field of tourism cultural performance, all the scenic spots present their representative works, including Beijing Night, the Kung-Fu Legend, acrobatics in Tian Qiao, and the Beijing Opera in Huguang Guild Hall. All of them are wonderful. From now on, Beijing will encourages high-quality original cultural tourism performances which have national character and Beijing feature and supports several branding live-action performances, large-scale song and dance shows, traditional featured plays and Beijing cultural presentations.

Not only Beijing, but many regions of China take the combination of culture and tourism as the major project of tourist industry. The China West Film Studio, where many well-known films and teleplays were shot, attracts visitors by the shooting scenes and the stage properties. The Yunnan province, an early starter with rapid development of the cultural tourism, combines cultural activities including "Impression of Lijiang", "Yunnan Impression", and the Naxi Ancient Music with beautiful nature scenery and featured custom, which becomes an important factor to attract tourists to visit Yunnan. In 2007, the earnings from Yunnan tourism are more than 58 billion yuan, which account for 12.3% of Yunnan GDP.

It's reported that, at the present, Chinese people take a trip one time per year on average, but the figure in Europe is 8, in American is 9, and in Southeast Asia is 2 to 3. It's thus clear that China has broad space for development of exploring cultural creation and developing cultural tourism market.

(CRI December 25, 2008)