(Forbes) – To the hundreds of young and unattached American Airlines workers threatened with lay offs: consider taking some classes in basic Mandarin Chinese.

Chinese airlines are on a recruitment drive for foreign flight attendants as the country’s aviation and travel industry continue to expand in the world’s No. 2 economy.

All the major airlines contacted by China Daily reporters recently said they were hiring foreign crew members for international flights. While many of these new cabin crew members will be from neighboring Asian countries, Westerners are following the trend East bound.

The daily reported that a growing number of foreign passengers booking flights on Chinese carriers has lent itself to higher demand for foreign language speakers.

Air China has the highest number of foreign attendants, currently around 40, with an expected 50 more South Korean staff waiting for work permits. China Southern said that flight attendants from India and Central Asia have been employed, with more to come, as well as others from Australia, France and the Netherlands.

China Eastern Airlines said it wants to hire around 100 foreign cabin crew members after hiring 20 flight attendants from Germany and France already this year.

Shen Xiaosheng, China Eastern’s deputy director of publicity, told China Daily on Wednesday that “many more foreign staff will be joining” it in future, insisting that the addition of more foreign faces has actually contributed to the carrier’s growing international and domestic traffic.

Earlier this year, American Airlines said it plans to lay off 13,000 workers in a restructuring effort to keep the company alive. The company reported a $15 million operating loss and a $142 million net loss in April.  The company now trades in the pink sheets, over the counter for less than $0.50 a share.

United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek told employees in March that the carrier will eliminate 1,300 jobs in Houston alone by this fall.

SAY the word “hoax” to most travellers and thoughts of sinister threats and lengthy travel delays usually come to mind.

In an age where officials are ultra-sensitive about travellers’ comments, demeanour and even wardrobe – leave that “George Bush is a terrorist” t-shirt at home, kids – one comment or tweet can cause major delays at a travel hub.

Bombs seem to be the favourite tactic of the hoaxer looking to cause travel trouble.

Two weeks ago an Air Mauritius plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Melbourne after a can of soda was found with a note saying ‘bomb’ taped to it.

While the can was found to not contain explosives (not unless you shook it really hard and then opened it), the plane was forced into a u-turn and emergency services were scrambled on the ground. 

Other ‘bomb’ hoaxes in recent years include a Russian mother calling in a threat because she didn’t approve of the man her daughter was flying off to marry and an Indian man calling to say there was a bomb on the flight he was booked on because he was running late in traffic.

Whether the number of threatening travel hoaxes has risen in recent years is hard to ascertain.

The internet and social media has made it easier for any unhinged person with a smartphone to make a threat but authorities are also more alert to any kind of threat considering events in New York, London, Madrid and Mumbai over the last decade.

But if you look past the dark side of hoaxes, you’ll also see travel has a rich tradition of falsehoods, fakers and lowdown, dirty lies

Whether it’s faked travel journals, encounters with over-sized primates or viral videos of airlines allowing passengers to check their kids into the cargo hold, the history of tall tales in travel is rich and varied.

Here’s a look at some of the best – and worst – travel-based hoaxes.

Man-Eating African Trees

A story of a species of man-eating tree found in Madagascar was first published in 1874 by the New York World, accompanied by a graphic tale of a woman being fed to the plant by the local Mkodo tribe.

Several papers and magazines reproduced the account over the years, including an 1881 article in the South Australian Register by a German explorer Carl Liche who claimed he witnessed a sacrifice by a tree that had branches like serpents. It was only in 1955 that the tree, the tribe and Liche himself were discovered to be fakes.

The Great Chinese Travel Hoaxes

Seems like back in the day, everyone wanted to write about visiting China without actually doing it.

It started off with explorer Marco Polo and his description of the country in his influential 13th century book Description of the World.

Although he claimed to have spent many years in the Far East – even being made an emissary by leader Qubilai Khan – there are said to be glaring omissions in his account.

He made no mention of the Chinese alphabet or script, or of chopsticks or the Great Wall of China; there was also no record in China of a visitor matching Polo’s description.

Then, in 1971, a five part report on one man’s travels through China published in the San Francisco Examiner was found out to be a fabrication.

Journalist Robert Patterson’s was found never to have received a visa to enter China and could offer no other proof he had been there.

The rival journalist who outed Patterson said he could easily have written his accounts “by doing some research or watching the President’s [Nixon] trip on TV.” The Examiner issued an apology a year later.

Hef’s NZ Love Pad

Back in 2009, after research by the University of Naples found a link between hydrogen sulphide – the ‘rotten egg’ gas emitted in some geothermal areas – and male arousal, Destination Rotorua came up with an idea.

They ran a full-page ad in the New Zealand Herald stating Playboy founder Hugh Hefner was jumping on a plane to convert part of the local North Island museum into a Down Under Playboy mansion, donating $900,000 in the process.

“There’s definitely something in the air in Rotorua,” said Hef. “At my age it’s great to get up in the morning without relying on any form of medication.”

The head of the Rotorua Centennial Trust made a statement and a video ‘interview’ with Hef was posted online, but few people ‘rose’ to the bait.

The San Seriffe Islands

The interest of intrepid English travellers was piqued in 1977 by a report in The Guardian about the recently discovered San Seriffe Islands.

Despite the island’s names – including main islands Upper and Lower Caisse – and their resemblance to full stops and single speech marks on maps of the region, the newspaper’s phones rang off the hook with people looking for more information on the holidaying hotspot.

The paper finally had to admit they invented the islands inspired by printer’s terminology as an April Fools Day joke and are widely credited with starting the newspaper tradition of trying to fool the public on April 1.

The Native of Formosa

An imposter of the highest order, a 17th century man known first as the Native of Formosa (Taiwan), and later christened George Psalmanazar, made a career of pretending to be an exotic foreigners from lands afar.

First saying he was Irish (until someone from Ireland called him out on it), he then claimed to be from Formosa, which proved easier as not many people knew natives of Taiwan didn’t have blonde hair, blue eyes and a Dutch accent.

He wowed audiences with native customs such as eating raw meat with spices and sleeping sitting up in a chair (!) and gained a certain amount of notoriety in England.

He was constantly questioned about his claimed heritage, answering that his skin was pail due to the Formosan upper classes living underground, but as more knowledge of the region was gathered, it became increasingly obvious Psalmanazar was a con man.

BEIJING - Chinese authorities have closed Tibet to foreign visitors, travel agents said Wednesday, just 10 days after two Tibetans set themselves on fire in the troubled region.

The move comes at the start of a festival that traditionally sees tourists flock to the Himalayan region, which has been under tight security since riots against Chinese rule erupted in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in March 2008.

Major travel agencies said they were told by Tibetan tourism authorities in late May that travellers from overseas would not be allowed into the vast, remote region and said they were clueless about how long the ban would last.

“The tourism bureau asked us to stop organizing foreign groups to Tibet in late May. We don’t know when they will lift the ban,” an employee at the Tibet China International Tour Service told AFP.

While the official reason for the ban was not immediately clear, one agent said it could be linked to the Saga Dawa festival, which celebrates the birth of Buddha in the Tibetan calendar.

“It was halted in late May. People said it was because of the… festival,” an employee at the Tibet China Travel Service said.

The festival traditionally sees Buddhist pilgrims flock to Tibet to mark the month-long celebration, which began on June 4 this year – a date that coincided with the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown on democracy protests.

Another agent from the Tibet China Youth Tour Service said the ban might also be linked to the “recent social order problem”.

China sporadically bans foreign travel to Tibet, where many Tibetans complain of cultural and religious repression at the hands of Chinese authorities – a claim the government denies.

Since March last year, 37 people have set themselves on fire in Tibetan-inhabited areas of China in protest at repressive government policies, according to activists.

On May 27, two Tibetan men set themselves alight in front of the Jokhang temple, a renowned centre for Buddhist pilgrimage in the centre of Lhasa – the first such incident to hit the regional capital.

Foreign tourists were banned from travelling to the region for more than a year in 2008 after anti-government riots erupted in Lhasa – unrest that subsequently spread to other Tibetan-inhabited areas of China.

Even in normal times, overseas tourists need special permits to travel to the remote region as well as their visas for China, and have to travel in tour groups.

Other Popular Destinations Include Maldives, Switzerland And Dubai

France expects from 4 to 5 million Chinese tourists over the next five years

They may be venturing further afield, seeking experiential travel and adventures beyond their trademark shopping sprees, but according to a recent Hurun report, China’s globetrotting millionaires are still fixated on France. Having surveyed 150 Chinese USD millionaires, Hurun and International Luxury Travel Market Asia found in their report that France remains the top destination for wealthy Chinese travelers, with the US coming in second, while — due in no small part to preferential visa agreements — the destinations growing in popularity most quickly include the Maldives, Switzerland and Dubai.

The report adds that the typical wealthy Chinese outbound traveler typically goes on holiday three times per year for an average of eight days, traveling in a group of nine. Though more seasoned Chinese travelers are being seen engaging in more experience-based activities — anything from scuba diving in Hawaii to safaris in Africa — the most yawn-worthy aspect of the study is that shopping still remains the top motivation for overseas travel. As the duty-free refund group Global Blue recently noted, Chinese tourists in Europe spend on average of €813 (US$1,011) on tax-free goods on each trip. According to Global Blue, Chinese spending accounted for 25 percent of untaxed purchases in France last year. As Christian Mantei, the general director of Atout France, a marketing agency for France abroad, recently told Le Figaro, “The Chinese are by far the No. 1 shoppers in France…Last year, they represented only 1.5 percent of foreign visitors, yet they spent about €500 million ($621.5 million).”

Though cash remains king among traveling Chinese, Su Ning, board chairman of China UnionPay (the country’s only credit card network), recently said that outbound Chinese spent some 300 billion yuan ($47.5 billion) overseas through bank cards in 2011, up by 66.7 percent from the 180 billion yuan they spent internationally one year prior. According to some estimates, wealthy Chinese tourists account for one-third of purchases in the European and North American luxury markets.

Though niche destinations and experiences are gaining popularity among outbound Chinese tourists making their fifth or sixth overseas jaunt, the “love affair with all things France” among high-end globetrotters is unlikely to change drastically soon, Rupert Hoogewerf of the Hurun Report said this week, noting that over 40 percent of respondents listed France as their top destination. Based on luxury consumption patterns of China’s rich, this is far from surprising. According to a recent study of the most searched-for luxury brands in China by the Luxury Society and Digital Luxury Group, four French luxury brands are listed in the top 10 alongside auto brands, and French marques account for half of Hurun’s top 10 list of most-gifted luxury brands in China. But they’re not just fixated on fashion or accessories brands; Chinese wine collectors have been some of the most aggressive bidders for top-flight Burgundy and Bordeaux at auctions in Hong Kong over the past two years.

France is still the preferred destination for wealthy Chinese travelers, though Shanghai millionaires prefer the US.

Peonies are in bloom in my garden now, and they are making me exceptionally happy.

But as I am the type of person who questions her happiness thoroughly whenever it occurs, I began to wonder why. Peonies are pretty of course, but that’s not enough of a reason to feel joy, for me at least.

Digging deeper — well, hitting Wikipedia — reveals that that the peony has  an
interesting, international history, rife with political intrigue and controversy. Ah, my attraction to this bloom instantly made sense — they’re trouble makers! I soon realized that I could create a very enjoyable international political peony itinerary. Here’s how it lays out:

Peonies in Alison Wellner’s garden

The first stop would be Greece, as the name “peony” stems from a very early Greek political controversy.  Evidently, the doctor of the Gods, Paeon had angered his mentor. Zeus reached for one of his standard solutions to a diplomatic crisis and turned Paeon into a flower. (Wonder if this would work to stabilize the Euro?)  Hence, Paeon became peony.

Next stop would be China — specifically the city of
Luoyang, China’s peony capital.  You may not be aware of this, but the peony is a serious contender for the title of  China’s national flower. The Qing dynasty apparently chose it as Number One Flower — a humiliating defeat for the plum blossom.

Currently, the People’s Republic does not have an official national flower, although the peony was  the people’s choice for national flower in the People’s Republic according to a 1994 opinion poll. The peony was proposed, but the government evidently got distracted by the impending re-absorption of Hong Kong and Macau and the matter never reached a definitive conclusion.

Taiwan has designated the plum blossom as its national flower, a fact which the People’s Republic has pointedly refused to recognize. (Among a few other things regarding Taiwan.)

However much China has dithered, one state in the U.S. heartland acted decisively on the peony issue. In 1957, Indiana declared the peony its official state flower, ditching the zinnia. After your visits to Greece and to China, a trip to
a public garden in Indiana will be a soothing, non-political experience.

Or will it? Apparently the peony caused
political trouble for the Hoosiers as well.

When the peony became Indiana’s state flower, it was hoped that its blooms would end the controversy that had roiled the state for more than forty years. In 1913, Indiana elevated the carnation, but demoted it in 1923, because of immigration issues: the carnation was not a native Indiana species.

Then came the tulip tree blossom, which was boring, and so in 1931, Indiana adopted the zinnia.

This put the Hoosiers right back where they started, because like the carnation, the zinnia was a migrant. Besides, some whispered, the only reason the zinnia got the nod was because of a certain, powerful zinnia seed grower.

In politics, it’s always the zinnia seed growers.

Unless it’s the peony growers. In a shift of flower power, the peony became the state flower, edging out the dogwood. Again, there were grumbles about the power of peony grower lobby, and the non-native issue. But evidently the beauty of the peonies makes everybody in Indiana as happy as it makes me, because the issue was dropped and has not been in serious doubt for more than fifty years.

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