Foreign tourists enjoying the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Photo: VCG
While big cities remain popular, traveling to smaller towns by high-speed rail is becoming a popular option, and China’s visa-free policy has seen an increase in foreign tourists visiting the country this summer.
Domestic travel platform Qunar found that travelers from the United States, South Korea, Russia, Vietnam and Malaysia were most interested in booking high-speed trains, preferring two-hour high-speed train journeys such as from southwest China’s Sichuan province to southwest China’s Chongqing, a report sent by Qunar to the Global Times showed.
“I took the high-speed train from Zhuhai to Guangzhou. It was great, so much better than driving,” Luke Seldar, a tourist from Australia who has 59,000 fans on Douyin and publishes a lot of content about traveling in China, told the Global Times on Monday.
Yiwu, a city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, is popular with foreign tourists, and is located within a two-hour high-speed rail ride from Shanghai and its surrounding cities. One foreign blogger wrote that he thought Santa was Chinese because the Christmas presents he received as a child had “MADE IN CHINA” written on them. He said he buys a lot of sports goods in Yiwu and that the Olympic spirit of Yiwu is second only to Paris, Qunar reported.
“We highlight lesser-known attractions such as rural tourism, small intangible cultural heritage projects and people’s daily lives in second- and third-tier cities, which will help introduce foreigners to a more vibrant, diverse and multifaceted China,” Wang said.
China is a vast country, so foreigners want to visit many cities in one trip. On the Qunar platform, Russian tourists visited 16 cities within six months, while Turkish tourists visited 12 cities. More than 10% of foreign tourists made a second visit within six months.
Serdar has visited five cities in China so far. He says he likes night markets and street food. “Chinese food is so delicious, I think I’ll start eating Chinese food when I go back home. I can understand why foreigners get fat when they return home.”
“We hope more foreigners will visit China and promote the ‘real China’ in international media. Those who visit China for the first time can see China’s development, convenience and safety. On their subsequent visits, they can explore lesser-known spots and have a deeper experience of the local culture,” Wang added.
“When I return to Australia, I will do my best to come back here as soon as possible. Yes, that’s how much I love China! After spending 20 wonderful days in China, I will highly recommend China to my friends who can take advantage of the 144-hour transit visa-exemption policy,” Serdar added.
“The visa-free policy is a milestone in China’s opening up to the outside world. I believe it will eventually be expanded to more countries and the visa-free stay period will be extended. This win-win policy will promote trade and cultural exchanges between China and other countries,” Wang said.
In the first half of this year, international bookings on the eLong hotel booking platform nearly doubled compared to last year, and hotels in major cities are expected to see a significant increase in bookings from foreign guests, according to a report by online travel platform Tongcheng.
According to data from the National Immigration Administration, the number of foreign tourists to China in the first half of 2024 was 14.635 million, up 152.7% year-on-year, of which 8.542 million were visa-free entrants, accounting for 52%, up 190.1% year-on-year.
