Tourist sites
Beijing: the Tiananmen place is dominated by a huge Mao's statue, the heart of the city, witness of numerous historic and political events. All around, there is a curious mix of monuments from the past and the present : Tiananmen (the door of the heavenly Peace), national symbol, the museum of History of the Chinese revolution, the palace of the People's Assembly, Qianmen (the front door), the Mao's mausoleum and the monument dedicated to people Heroes. Then, the Forbidden City is worth visiting: it is the most gigantic and best protected of the Chinese architectural sets. Built in the XVth century and reconstructed in the XVIIIth, it was used as a place of pension and leisure for emperors and their courtiers; today the offices of the eminent members of the PCC are located there.
Shanghai, Queen of the East, city of the adventurers, the players, the idle, the dandies, the missionaries, the opium takers, the gangsters and the swindlers... Shanghai has always haunted memories. Today, it tries hard to throw away the rags of collectivism and makes an obvious archaism coexist with the attributes of the most advanced modernism. Located in the mouth of Yangzi, it occupied an ideal position to become a commercial harbour and built its fortune on opium, silk and tea.
Xi'an once competed with Rome, then Constantinople, for the title of " biggest town of the world ". For more than two millenniums, it witnessed the rise, and then the decline, of numerous dynasties; its monuments and its archeological sites remind that it used to be the centre of the Chinese world. Today, Xi'an is one of the major attractions of the country. Several historic vestiges are spread in the surroundings. There is over there a certain Islamic influence with a Muslim district and the mosque. Finally, this is where the famous terracotta Army of soldiers, buried in the ground for about 2.000 years, was discovered in 1974.
The Great Wall, also called the "Long Wall of the 10,000 lis" (the li being a measurement unit corresponding to 539 m), extends from the coast up to the Gobi's desert. The construction started 2,000 years ago and required the participation of hundreds of thousands of workers. It is interesting to note that the wall, which had been forgotten for a long time, but was saved by tourism is, for numerous Chinese, more a symbol of tyranny than of beauty.
Protected by the Himalaya fortress, Tibet has been occupying for a long time a special place in the Occidental myth: Sometimes called either Shangri-La, "country of the Snows" or "Roof of the world", it remains surrounded with a particular aura. For years and years, rare are those who had the privilege to go to Lhasa. When it opened, in the 80's, Tibet was no longer this magic Buddhist realm, which impassioned travelers of the first half of the XXth century.
For more information about tourism
in China
, check out the following web site(s) :
China National Tourism Office (CNTO)
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