In the 15 years since its return to China, Hong Kong has taken several giant strides to establish itself as a premier economic destination in the world. At the same time, the city has also emerged as one of the most popular tourist destinations in Asia.

Lo Sui-on, executive director of China Travel Service (Holdings) Hong Kong Ltd, says that the major turning point for the Hong Kong economy, particularly the services industry, was the introduction of the Individual Visit Scheme in 2003. According to Lo, the plan was just the right medicine to heal the economic ailments of Hong Kong at that time.

Recollecting the dark days, Lo says the city was reeling from the aftermath of SARS, which had almost blocked off all tourist arrivals to the city.

Added to that was surging unemployment rates of more than 8 percent, a legacy of the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

The steady influx of tourists from the mainland after the plan was introduced on July 28, 2003 has more than paid off and continues to be a strong magnet for overall economic growth in Hong Kong even today, says Lo, a deputy to the 11th National People’s Congress.

Hong Kong is known for its advanced business and trade activities. Though the city is one of the leading international financial centers with many people holding high-paying jobs, the majority of the city’s population are the “actual beneficiaries of the thriving tourism economy”, Lo says.

“It is essentially a service-dominated economy. Sectors like retail, dining, hotels and tourism have provided jobs to a large chunk of the city’s labor force and witnessed explosive growth, thanks to the opportunities brought about by tourists, particularly those from the mainland.”

According to the Hong Kong Tourism Board, Hong Kong had a record 41.9 million visitors in 2011, a 16.4 percent increase over the previous year. It was also the first time that the number of arrivals surpassed the 40 million mark.

More than 28 million of the travelers hailed from the mainland last year, accounting for 67 percent of the city’s total arrivals. Total tourism expenditure reached HK$253 billion ($32.6 billion) in 2011, up 20.5 percent from the previous year, according to government statistics.

Though the global economic woes have triggered some concerns for the Hong Kong economy, the city has still been able to keep its jobless rate at low levels, thanks to the influx of mainland spenders, Lo says.

The unemployment rate in Hong Kong stood at an average of 3.4 percent during 2011. The rate further fell to 3.2 percent during the three-month period ended in January, signifying “a state of full employment in the labor market”, according to government officials.

“The resilience of the local job market and easing inflationary pressures have given a push to retail sales and spurred domestic demand in Hong Kong, as do the continued strong visitor inflows,” Donna Kwok, Greater China economist from HSBC, said in a research report in May commenting on the city’s better-than-expected retail sales figures.

She highlighted the contribution of continued robust inflows of tourists from the mainland that averaged well over 2 million per month.

The plan has since been extended to 49 cities on the mainland, while a number of others are eager to be added to the list.

On the other hand, Hong Kong also needs to improve further in many aspects to cater to the increasing demand, Lo says.

Accommodation cost is still a major issue in Hong Kong. It is important for the city to be well-prepared to accommodate the 45 million or so visitors every year, or else it may find itself stretched to the extremes.

litao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/01/2012 page8)

Man Luen Choon

Given that it is situated on the second floor of a nondescript office building down a busy lane filled with market stalls between Des Voeux and Connaught Roads in Central, Man Luen Choon is not the sort of place you’ll just stumble across. A 50-year-old, family-run emporium dedicated to the art of Chinese scroll painting, this large, airy space is stacked with handmade paper, giant calligraphy brushes and ceramic ink pots, and exudes the quiet sophistication of Chinese culture which is not always so evident in workaday, street-level Hong Kong. It also stocks a fantastic selection of art and architecture books, as well as instructional books and videos.
• 2F Harvest Building, 29-35 Wing Kut Street, Central, +852 2544 6965, manluenchoon.com. Open Mon-Fri 10am-6.30pm, Sat 10am-5.30pm, Sun and public holidays by appointment

Yuan Heng Spice Co

Photograph: Alex Daye/Moustache 

The Yuan Heng Spice Co is one of many odd little shops and stalls in the alleyways between the antique shops of Hollywood Road and the tourist tat of Cat Street. Most of these businesses exist to service the trade in antiquities – of both the high and low variety – for which the area is famous. Iron welders repair hardware, noodle stalls feed workers and shoppers, and junk collectors scavenge for old photographs – often of the x-rated variety – to sell in the alleyways and sidestreets. Not so Yuan Heng – this emporium deals in whole spices: giant sticks of cinnamon, ancient orange peel, whole Sichuan peppercorns anΩd all sorts of other exotic spices in neatly marked hessian sacks spill on to the streets. If in doubt, follow your nose: it’s an olfactory oasis in a not always sweet-smelling part of town, especially come summer when diesel fumes and wet market odours drift up the hill on the morning fog.
• 19 Tung Street, Sheung Wan, +852 2542 0275, yp.com.hk/yuanhengspice. Open Mon-Sat 9am-6pm

Kung Fu Shoe Kiosk

Photograph: Harry Temple 

Perhaps an even less likely survivor on the new Hollywood Road, cheek by jowl with British designer Ilse Crawford’s residential development at 226 (prices of which rival those on the Peak) is another small green kiosk. These tiny stalls, doled out by the British to curb the rampant roadside marketeering after the population explosion of the mid-20th century, still dot the city, and this one deals in made-to-measure Chinese kung fu shoes. It is located, again, on an old stone staircase, and one suspects the brisker trade these days is in repairing the Manolo Blahniks and Christian Louboutins – battered by the vertiginous streets of Hong Kong – belonging to the neighbourhood’s posh new residents, This is somewhat sad given that this is the last establishment in the city specialising in handmade Chinese shoes.
• Hollywood Road, just before Pound Lane and next to bFelix furniture, Sheung Wan

Hip Wo Housewares

Photograph: Alex Daye/Moustache

Hip Wo Housewares, another hold-out among the cafes and art galleries of western Hollywood Road, is a fabulously quintessential Hong Kong shop selling a little bit of everything you need but never knew you did. Crates of astonishingly low-priced canvas plimsolls and brightly coloured rain boots spill on to the pavement. Inside, the shopkeeper and his wife behind the counter are dwarfed by glass display cases neatly overflowing with printed pyjamas and underwear left over from the 1970s. The shop’s aisles are stocked with all the necessities of urban Chinese living: big thermoses, rice cookers, soup bowls, woks and the like. A real, honest-to -God “Mom and Pop Shop”.
• 180A Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan, +852 2546 3671

Western Market

Photograph: Scott S. Warren/National Geographic Society/Corbis 

Hong Kong’s oldest surviving market building, Western Market, a lone Edwardian fantasy surrounded by the brutalist office buildings the city is more famous for, is home to a handful of cafes, florists and souvenir shops on the ground floor and a giant dim sum palace that doubles as a ballroom on the top. The real draw, though, is the fabulous fabric market on the mezzanine level, filled with deadstock worsted suiting and vintage printed silks, cotton poplin shirting and canvas upholstery fabrics, in addition to Chinese brocades and Thai silk. Though it is pricier, and certainly much smaller, than markets in Sham Shui Po, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, the quality of the selection is, on the whole, much better.
• 323 Des Voeux Road, Sheung Wan, +852 6029 2675, westernmarket.com.hk/eng

Hair Cut Shop

Photograph: Alex Daye/Moustache 

It’s hard to imagine a less likely place for this tin-shed barber’s shop than in the shadow of the CentreStage tower, home to two of Hong Kong’s trendiest eateries, The Press Room and Classified. And it’s even harder to imagine how the little green kiosk could possibly have survived the construction of its mammoth neighbour. Located at the foot of one of Hong Kong’s surviving ladder streets – crumbling stone stairways leading up to the Mid-Levels, built by the British in pre-escalator days – and filled with delightful old implements of the trade, this one-chair shop is open infrequently and attracts a diminishing crowd of mainly local men as old as the stairs themselves.
• Shing Wong Street and Hollywood Road (behind CentreStage, 108 Hollywood Road), Sheung Wan

Siu Woo Trading Co

Photograph: Alex Daye/Moustache 

The Siu Woo Trading Company, adjacent to Western Market in Sheung Wan, sells all manner of inexpensive bamboo, rattan and straw housewares: rugs and rubbish bins, placemats and picnic hampers. It’s even got rattan dog carriers – in multiple sizes! Siu Woo also stocks a full range of kitchen utensils, crockery and hardware, all tidily arranged on the small shop’s shelves, though the basketry is the main draw. It was established in 1958, and the elderly assistant still counts out change on an abacus.
• 94 Bonham Strand, Sheung Wan, +852 2544 2049

Lee Kung Man Knitting Factory

Photograph: Alex Daye/Moustache 

Founded in Guangzhou in 1928, the Lee Kung Man Knitting Factory is one of the oldest private clothing companies in China, with four outlets in Hong Kong, selling men’s and women’s underwear with the Cicada brand name. Their no-nonsense cardigans and T-shirts, neatly stacked in glass display cases, are often made from a coarse and bafflingly heavy – given the climate – greige cotton, so their success here is something of a mystery, but will certainly please hipsters from more northerly latitudes. They do, however, have possibly the best logo in all of China and are excellent candidates for a heritage brand revival, once the Chinese market begins to demand one.
• 111 Wing Lok Street, Sheung Wan, +852 2543 8579, leekungman.com

Woo Ping Optical Co

Photograph: Alex Daye/Moustache 

Further afield in North Point, Woo Ping Optical Company, established in 1974, stocks a wonderfully eclectic mix of stock from the 1960s and 1970s, vintage and new Japanese frames, generally of the big, plastic and nerdy variety, and usually for a song. It is probably the primary reason every other young guy you see on the street here looks like Elvis Costello. Just look for the sign with a giant pair of coke-bottle glasses. The couple who run Woo Ping couldn’t be nicer; though their English might be a bit rusty, do be sure to ask them to see the stock not on display, as there are many hidden treasures. Woo Ping might seem obscure, but they do count plenty of local celebrities among their customers, like the unforgettable happy lady Shum Din-ha, tycoon Li Ka-shing and singer Eason Chan.
• 278 King’s Road, North Point, +852 2571 7810

Linva Tailor

Founded in 1965, Linva Tailor is Hong Kong’s most famous purveyor of Cheongsams – the high collared, traditional Chinese dresses still worn by Chinese women, alebeit rarely. Located on a busy pedestrian street underneath the Mid-Levels escalator, and headed by 68-year old master tailor Sifu Ching-Wah Leung, Linva is a shrine to this vanishing craft, with old wooden closets stuffed with fine, often flamboyantly patterned silk dresses. The shop window is crammed with finished and almost finished garments encrusted with beads and sequins, embroidered dragons and vibrant coloured cut velvets. When local film star Maggie Cheung needs a new Cheongsam, this is where she comes.
• 38 Cochrane Street, Central, +852 2544 2456

• Alex Daye is the co-owner of tailor Moustache and writes the travel blog jadaye.wordpress.com

China is forging ahead with high-end tourism in the Tibet Autonomous Region, especially in the southeastern region, with the first of 22 planned villages being given a Swiss motif.

Xinhua News Agency (in simplified Chinese only) reported that Guangdong Province will invest more than RMB 400 million (US$63 million) in Nyingchi’s (林芝) tourism industry, a prefecture some 400 kilometers east of Lhasa, bordering Myanmar and India.

News of the tourism drive came only weeks after reports of foreign tourists being banned from entering Tibet.

A new draw for Tibet

According to the plan, Guangdong will help build 22 “prosperous model villages” in Nyingchi in counties such as Bomê and Zayü.

“Through cultivating the high-end travel industry, [the plan] will turn southeast Tibet into a new ‘business card’ of Tibetan tourism,” wrote Xinhua.

These new Swiss-style hamlets are due to be completed in the next three years. They are expected to improve Tibetans’ economic conditions as well as help locals to host home-stay for travelers.

Nyingchi means “the throne of the sun” in Tibetan. The prefecture stands roughly 3,100 meters above the sea level.

The “Switzerland of the East”

As the initial part of Guangdong’s partner assistance, construction of one of the 22 villages broke ground in March in Lulang Town (鲁朗), Nyingchi County.

When we travel to Tibet now, we think of Lhasa and the Potala Palace. We hope in the future, people will want to go to Lulang, in addition to those two places.

– Cai Jiahua (蔡家华), secretary of Nyingchi County Party Committee

According to Dongguan Daily, the tourist complex was designed by Leisure Quest International, a tourism and leisure development and planning company based in California.

Cai Jiahua (蔡家华), secretary of Nyingchi County Party Committee, told Dongguan Daily (in simplified Chinese only) that the plan was to build a “typical Swiss-style tourist town.”

Cai also mentioned two other goals for the new town: to get on the cover of “National Geographic” and to become Tibet’s second landmark.

“When we travel to Tibet now, we think of Lhasa and the Potala Palace,” said Cai during a Lulang town’s planning meeting last year. “We hope in the future, people will want to go to Lulang, in addition to those two places.”

Construction of the Lulang section will cost approximately RMB 115 million. It’s scheduled to be completed in 2013.

A railway linking Lhasa and Nyingchi will begin construction in 2013.

Thoughts from a traveler

“Nyingchi is not yet a tourist hot spot in Tibet,” said Billy Zi (字文照), product manager and tour guide of Beijing-based online tour provider Trekiz.

Zi spent about one month in Nyingchi in 2009 and was awed by Nyingchi’s unspoiled nature and Tibetan culture.

“The scenery is so beautiful and peaceful that it’s hard to use words to describe the feeling,” he said.

According to Zi, Nyingchi looks different to other parts of Tibet — apart from vast grassland, the area is home to lush forest where plateau vegetation grows. It’s also the best location to experience the “Red Hats” culture, a school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Part of the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon passes through Nyingchi.

Zi said the area is not popular with Chinese backpackers yet — instead many Southeast Asian travelers detour to Nyingchi from the traditional Lhasa-Nepal route.

The best way to reach Nyingchi is from provincial capital Lhasa, Chengdu in Sichuan or Shangri-la in Yunnan.

Zi expressed concerns that the new travel plan might ruin Nyingchi’s aboriginal ecology and, instead, it will use man-made attractions to promote the native scenery and culture.

XINING, July 1 (Xinhua) — China will increase passenger train services from major cities to Lhasa to cope with a travel surge that has rippled across the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau since a landmark railway opened six years ago, railway officials said Sunday.

Trains will travel daily between Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong province, and Lhasa starting from July 9, said Wang Tao, a spokesman for the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company. Chengdu-Lhasa trains will soon follow the same schedule.

Seven major Chinese cities currently have Lhasa-bound trains. All are expected to operate on a daily basis in the future, Wang said. Among them, Beijing, Shanghai and Xining already have daily trains to Lhasa.

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway, spanning 1,956 km from Xining to Lhasa, has transported 52.76 million passengers since going into operation on July 1, 2006, said Bao Chuxiong, general manager of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company.

Bao said railway has become the “first choice” for most Tibet travelers.

The number of Qinghai-Tibet Railway travelers has grown by about 10 percent annually, he said. Last year, it reached 10.6 million, up 65.6 percent compared to the figures from 2006.

But the increase has strained railway operators, as there are not enough oxygenated trains to meet demand, said Ma Xiaojun, another official with the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Company.

Because of the low oxygen content on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, trains traveling on the railway have to use sealed and oxygenated train cars. Currently, all Lhasa-bound passengers board oxygenated trains from the departure city, but this arrangement will become impossible when all services are offered on a daily basis, Ma said.

Starting this month, passengers on Guangzhou-Lhasa trains will need to switch from ordinary trains to oxygenated trains at the Xining railway station, just as they would transfer between flights in an airport, he said.

“The mass transfer, usually involving hundreds or even thousands of passengers, is really a scene to watch,” the official said. “The railway station operators have undergone many drills to be prepared.”

Railway officials said that if the transfers work properly, efforts to increase Lhasa-bound train services will be expedited so that people can easily ride a train to Tibet from any Chinese city connected to the country’s railway network.

Ji Kangping, a researcher with the Academy of Social Sciences in Qinghai, said the railway has become an important driver for the region’s economy. The number of domestic tourists to Tibet has grown particularly fast in recent years, he said.

According to the Tibet Tourism Bureau, the region received 8.6 million tourists last year, about seven times the number received before the Qinghai-Tibet Railway opened. Tibet aims to attract 10 million tourists this year, with tourism revenues expected to reach 12 billion yuan (1.89 billion U.S. dollars), the local government said.

The number of Indian tourists visiting mainland China, the world’s third largest tourist destination with 135 million inbound travellers last year, is expected to rise only marginally this year owing to continuing slide of Rupee, a Chinese tourism official said.

“We expect only a marginal increase in the number of Indian visitors to mainland China this year at over 6.1 lakh. Last year, the number of Indians visiting mainland China stood at more than 6,06,500. But with the rupee on a downhill and the yuan on an upward spiral, we have to take this into account,” said the China National Tourism Office.

The rupee has lost almost 4 percent since January this year against the dollar and nearly 28 per cent since last August, making foreign travel and imports costly.

According to the latest data provided by the Chinese Tourism, the number of Indians visiting their neighbour stood at 2,45,901 during the January-May period, an increase of just 0.72 percent over the same period last year.

In contrast, 57,319 Chinese tourists visited India during the same period, showing an increase of 22.8 percent over the corresponding months the previous year.

India usually ranks 13th to 15th among China’s source markets for tourism, while the top source destinations for China are its neighbours South Korea, Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam.

The China National Tourism is targeting Indian cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata for its customers from India. While most of the Indians China for business purposes followed by leisure, the tourism board is keen to increase its promotional budget this year targetting Indian market.