Traveling inside China

Some people have asked me and I’m sure most people that know me wonder why a guy from Oklahoma with a law degree and an MBA degree wants to live in China and run a tourism services company. I often ask myself the same question, but the short answer is that China is such an interesting place to live and I wanted to do something that could help people from other countries experience what a fun place it can be to travel here. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been able to travel to many different places in China since I came here in 2000, and if you don’t expect 5-star accommodations, immaculate conditions and Western food everywhere you go, traveling inside China is great fun. As in any country, of course you have to be careful about petty thievery and people trying to rip you off on prices because you are a foreigner, but overall China is a very safe country in which to travel and the people are very friendly, for the most part. If you have a friendly attitude, 90% of the time people will treat you with kindness, and that’s a pretty good ratio for any country but especially for a developing country such as China. Some of the smaller villages that I have stayed in in Henan Province had never had a foreigner visit there before, and people actually stopped in the street and stared, but if I smiled at them they would usually smile back. I supposed that I had the same type of feeling as the way a movie or music star feels when they go out in public, except that I had done nothing to deserve the attention other than coming to visit from another country.

I guess the purpose of this particular writing today is to encourage anyone that should ever read this that they should certainly visit the big cities of China such as Beijing and Shanghai, but they should also spend a day or two in smaller cities or villages off of the beaten path. I’m hoping to offer tours through Beijing Discovery Tours that will help people to experience places that most tourists never see, although travelers to these destinations will need to be a little more open-minded and flexible when it comes to sanitary conditions and lodging. Those things can be a bit “dodgy” to borrow a term from my British buddies when traveling outside of the major cities in China, but it just adds to the adventure and provides a source of great stories to tell to your friends when you return back home.

This entry was posted on September 19, 2007 at 10:40 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.