PHILIPPINES: China’s New Playground

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BORACAY, Feb 28 2007 (IPS) - From sand replicas of the Great Wall on the fine, white beaches here to rowdy banquets of singing moon gazers, traces of China’s expanding economic boom are everywhere to be found on this tiny Philippines island, an hour by plane from Manila.

Once a backpacker’s haven and until recently a cove for South Korean divers and honeymooners, Boracay is now attracting crowds of mainland Chinese tourists who arrive stunned by its pristine white beaches and eager to lose their government- instilled inhibitions.

“I have never seen such beauty,” confessed Xu Lijia, a young Chinese woman, sipping coconut juice through a straw straight out of the shell at Coco Loco, one of the island’s iconic backpacker hangouts. “It is better to be here than anywhere else, shopping or sightseeing. It is really relaxing.”

Indoctrinated to comply with Western standards of etiquette when they travel to Europe, Chinese tourists find the laidback and friendly attitude of their Filipino hosts refreshing. “You don’t need to worry what you wear or what you say, neither how you say it,” muses Xu. “Everything goes.”

A Chinese New Year banquet here on the beach exemplified the ease many Chinese tourists felt on their arrival even as traditional New Year trimmings like firecrackers and dumplings were absent from the fare. After quickly making their way through piles of seafood delicacies like the local Lapu Lapu fish and freshly grilled lobsters, tourists began to drown the tunes of the live Filipino live band with their own renditions of Bob Marley.

Games of finger snapping were noisily played over the tables where rum and coke had substituted the Chinese fiery spirit ‘bai jiu’, while video cameras recorded the night feast played out against an enormous star-dotted sky and tranquil sea.

“We have seen more and more mainland Chinese tourists coming here in recent years, especially over Chinese New year,” says Francis Tayengo, beach resort owner in Boracay. “For them it is a new way of celebrating the festival but, they seem to like it and keep coming back.”

Locals welcome the boost to their tourist industries that Chinese travellers bring as they go diving, sailing on bangcas (traditional Filipino boats) and snorkelling in the waters off the White Beach. There are no Chinese eateries yet among the potpourri of international food available on Boracay beach a mushrooming of food spas cater to the demands of Chinese, Korean and Japanese tourists.

“It is not a place where big spenders would come,” says Xu who arrived as part of a Chinese tourist group in which many are travelling abroad for the first time. “It is too small and the shopping is not very exciting but the scenery is fantastic.” With more cash to spend even people with moderate incomes among China’s rapidly growing middle-class are now going abroad in large numbers.

As China becomes increasingly wealthy, the projections for this explosion in Chinese travel are mind-boggling.

In 1995, only 4.5 million Chinese travelled overseas. By 2005, the figure had increased to 31 million. By the end of 2006, the Chinese government had given 129 countries approved destination status, which means tourist groups no longer have to go through a complicated process to go abroad.

Both Chinese and international travel industry experts forecast that at least 50 million Chinese tourists will travel overseas annually by 2010 and 100 million by 2020. By then, the World Tourism Organisation predicts that China will be the world’s largest tourism market.

In Asia, China has already overtaken Japan to become the largest source of outbound travellers. The vast majority restricted their travel to neighbouring Hong Kong and Macao, but a growing number of mainland Chinese tourists now travel farther, filling more Asian airplanes, hotel rooms and beaches.

Yet the vast numbers of travellers leaving the country have created headaches for Chinese custodians of good manners. With little exposure to the outside world some Chinese travellers have found themselves criticised abroad for spitting, shouting and rolling up their trousers or exposing their bellies to keep cool.

“At a time when tourists are becoming China’s latest export, the ‘China man’ has become a proxy for the uncivilised and coarse person,” lamented the weekly ‘Southern Weekend’ in a recent opinion piece.

Image-conscious government officials have been quick to put together a code of conduct recommended for travellers going abroad, called the ‘Guide’. While not compulsory, the guide is expected to act as a reminder to tourists of their public role.

“We might not be official China envoys when we go abroad but we have got to remember that we are Chinese people and foreigners would judge us as representatives of our country,” says Liu Deqian, professor of tourist studies at Beijing Union University who took part in the compilation of the guide.