Written in 1995
Tourism is the smokeless industry. For years it has been an international trend that each and every country exerts full effort in developing her tourism, which not only improves her image but also raises her GNP.
It is the goal of most countries that wherever tourists go in their countries, the places they go are worth visiting. In order to reach this goal, development is vital, including customs, economy, society, modern transportation, ecological conservation, prevention and elimination of environmental pollution.
The Foundation of Development
China is a populous country.
With over one billion Chinese people, 600 million people in India, 240 million people in Indonesia, roughly 2.5 billion people in Asia, half of the world’s population, Asia has a host of human resources. With the experiences of developed countries, the potential for development is unlimited.
Throughout the world, Japan is known for its economy and for producing the latest in electronic goods. It is one member of the Great 7, followed by the Four Little Dragons(Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore).
Taiwan has received aid to an amount some three times the average given to underdeveloped countries, inherited an industrial base from the Japanese, and a skilled labour force with managerial talent readily available. It is very easy to dismiss Taiwan as a special case and pass over the significant development lessons it provides.
China and India are home to two-fifths of the world’s people. Each country is the dominant power in an important part of Asia. For the past two years, China has been the globe’s fastest-growing economy. And India has taken historic strides during the same period toward liberalizing its own economic structure. There is much business the two can profitably do together. Trade and investment aside, China can share with its neighbors its experiences in making the transition from central planning to a market economy.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong, with a relatively high per capita income for the region, has undergone rapid development over the past years, following the decline of its entrepot trade with mainland China. Since 1953 this trade decline itself has been partially compensated by a redirection of the trade, and tonnages handled have increased. With 80% foreign investments, Hong Kong is now an operational center in Asia. But with the problem of 1997, the year of China’s takeover, many professional people have already emigrated.
Aside from the prospect of its trade with mainland China, the government has undertaken to improve the colony’s development possibilities, and to encourage the growth of industry without direct intervention.
Singapore, founded in 1819, developed as a trading colony in the era of the imperialism of free trade. Over 150 years, the island’s links within the region have been close-forged. As a political entity, however, Singapore has developed separately and differently.
Asia’s economic miracle has given a new credibility to its architects. Throughout the 1980s, premiers Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia championed Asian values and forcefully countered what they saw as foreign interference in the region’s political and economic life. Now a new breed of thinkers is starting to provide a conceptual framework for these positions, which can be called the Asian Way.
Tourism in Asia
A nation should improve its economic conditions and then develop its cultural and touristic industry. Many countries have enjoyed considerable economic growth in recent years. The standard of living is becoming ever higher. Tourism has become more popular.
Japan
Temple
Japan is famous for its economic might and trading prowess. The snowcapped profile of Fuji and its surrounding temples lure numerous tourists to Japan. There is plenty of fun at suburban Tokyo’s Disneyland with its thrilling rides, its exciting shows, and colorful costume parades. This is a fantasy world where dreams come true for children of all ages. Well-preserved traditions let visitors experience the grandeur of the Tea Ceremony, the beauty of flower arrangement, the action of Sumo, the drama of Kubuki theater, and thermal springs.
The Japanese have long treasured Okinawa as their private, backyard Hawaii. Surrounded by warm seas, this chain of islands supports living coral reefs and its people are ethnically distinct from the neighbors in China and Japan. Okinawans paid tribute to both states during the 16th century. Although both cultures influenced its indigenous culture and crafts, it has retained a unique heritage, such as Bin-Gata fabric, with its reddish hue.
China
Great Wall of China
Since 1978, tourism has been developing rapidly in China. The rate of growth of the number of tourists has been more rapid than the rate of growth in per capita national income. China is indeed fascinating with its many generations of cultural and traditional heritage. Many nations, like Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore have been influenced by Chinese culture.
China has plenty of tourist attractions. Among them are the Great Wall, the Terra Cotta Army(both among the 8 wonders of the world), the Forbidden City, Confucius’ Temple, the Genghis Khan Mausoleum. All of these recreate China’s five thousand years of history, culture and magnificent landscape as well as lifestyles and customs of different regions and diversified nationalities. The long river of history and the ocean of culture are new experiences for visitors. Each scene is exquisite beyond comparison and remarkably true to life.
Chinese food offers an opportunity for foreigners and Chinese people from all over the world to appreciate the diversity of a gastronomic inheritance which originated in the various parts of the country, from the climatic extremes of the frozen winters of northern China to Hai-nan’s tropical summers. The great varieties of cuisines include hot pot stews, steamed buns, vegetables, seafood, snacks made of wheat and rice, sweets made from beans, peanuts, sesame, vegetarian foods, and meat of all types. There are performances in the art of food preparation, for example: hand-made noodles, and the making and hand-made dough figures of mythological characters. The importance of food is truly celebrated in Chinese culture.
Taiwan
Taipei, Taiwan
To visit Taiwan is to appreciate Chinese culture, and the trip is certainly worth it. Taroko Gorge is one of the seven wonders of Asia. It is along a 12-mile stretch of highway built into awesome marble cliffs high above the rushing river.
Dazzling lanterns, silk painting performances, old-fashioned candy making, lively folk songs, fan making and much more. Folk performances of dragon dances, lion dances, acrobats, traditional music, and stilt walkers are also enchanting. Visitors will also notice the potential of the island as a tourist destination, with the rich reserves of Chinese culture preserved in museums and in the daily lives of the people. Travellers can enjoy cuisine, spectacular coastal scenery, awesome gorges, and some of the most spectacular and unspoiled mountains in this part of the world.
Vietnam
Independence Palace, Ho Chi Minh City
Worshipping Chinese gods and enjoying French bread—the people of Vietnam have absorbed the influences of both East and West. The capital Ho Chi Minh City, formerly called Saigon, bears the tree-lined boulevards and romantic open-air cafes that once earned it the sobriquet of “Little Paris”. Though best known for tortoise-shell handicrafts, Vietnam also produces inlaid pottery.
Malaysia
Malaysia is a land of diverse cultures. This diversity is reflected in its architecture of Moorish palaces and Islamic mosques, and in its cuisines of Malay, Indian, and Chinese origin. Together with the peninsula’s rich natural resources, these combine to make Malaysia a unique travel spot. Its myriad of colorful pastimes include craftmaking, batik printing and joyous celebrations of its many festivals.
Thailand
With an area of 514,000 square kilometres, Thailand has a population of 58,000,000. The former Siam changed its name to Thailand in 1939, with the meaning of “a freedom state” in Thai.
Buddhism is the state religion. There are more than 30,000 temples in the whole country, so Thailand is known as “a state of Buddhism”. The buildings of temples are decorated with gold, carvings, painted drawings, and statues. Exquisite and magnificent in structure, many of them are rare treasures in the world.
Thailand has rich tourist resources. Bangkok, the capital, called “the city of angels”, with temples standing in great numbers and a crisscross network of rivers, has achieved the fame as “Venice of the Orient”. Pattaya on the bank of the Gulf of Siam is adorned with long fine sandy beaches and clear water, and various equatic sports and activities. In Chiang Mai travelers may enjoy the fantastic landscape of the border region and life and customs of various minority nationalities in the mountainous area. Cha-am and Hua Hin are famous seaside holiday resorts. With its smooth beach and tranquil environment, the imperial summer palace and tourist villas are scattered along the beach and a first-class golf course can be found. It is a mixture of modernization and the beauty of tradition with a unique style.
Israel
Israel, with the sun-drenched climate and the rich variety of sites and sights—historical, archaeological, religious, or just wonderful. It’s a fascinating contrast between the ancient and the modern. Visitors will also experience the special thrill of walking in the footsteps of history while retracing the very paths trod by the Crusaders 1,000 years ago, by Jesus 2,000 years ago, by King David 3,000 years ago, and by the patriarch Abraham 4,000 years ago. Or, the health spas on the shores of the impossible-to-sink-in Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth.
CIS
Stretching from the Baltic shore to the Bering Strait and from the Arctic tundra to the Black and Caspian Seas, the Commonwealth of Independent States, formerly called USSR, has holy citadels reaching northward into a wide and gentle realm of birch and fir. Along with religion the Russians founded an adoptable culture in Constantinople, including the domed cruciform architecture borrowed from early cathedrals, such as Holy Sofia. Also indebted to Byzantine models, icon painting achieved the singular quality of a national art.
Australia and New Zealand
Ayres Rock, Australia
Compared to the other great zoogeographic regions—Eurasia, Africa, Southeast Asia and the two Americas—the Australian zone is small and in large part arid and inhospitable. But this flat, drought-plagued land supports a magnificently rich and strange collection of wildlife. Many of its principal groups of plants and animals have evolved on their own, independent of trends in the world at large. Others have found sanctuary in which to vegetate and survive as relic types similar to forms which elsewhere on earth vanished millions of years ago.
Koalas, the speciality of Australia, at first glance seems to be a fair description of this gentle, stump-tailed creature which drowses away its days up a tree. With its slow ways and the desirability of its soft fur, the koala was very hard hit by civilization.
The kangaroo is a nomad, grazing widely over the arid center of Australia. Like most marsupials, the mother takes full responsibility for her joey. Hanging out of its mother’s pouch, a joey is able to nibble bits of short grass as its mother leisurely forages for herself.
Just to watch a platypus, without knowing anything about its importance as a primitive mammal, is enough to convince anyone of its oddity. As it emerges from its burrow—usually under the roots of a tree by a stream and usually in the half-light of dawn or dusk—its slate-gray bill looks like nothing so much as a leathery sheath which someone has pushed up over its trowel-shaped nose.
The unique tuatara of New Zealand, for instance, persists as the sole survivor of a reptilian line anteceding the lizards and even the dinosaurs.
Kiwi
In New Zealand, people often say that: “In several years, humanity will be agonizing the pollution, but we will still have this heaven on earth.” They also say: “If Australia is the wonderland of life, New Zealand is man’s last paradise.”
Mankind loves nature, no matter the ethos, no matter the eras. Our fundamental and final ideals are seeking for heaven, sweet harmony with mother nature.
The Fascinating Pacific
“Aloha”—the spirit of aloha—meaning love and thanks, is a pervasive part of Hawaiian life. Visitors to these balmy, sun-drenched islands are welcomed with leis and the cry of aloha. At night, the best way to experience Hawaii’s famed hospitality is to enjoy a feast called the grand luau.
The all-new village is the perfect paradise with lush tropical plants and flowers, cascading waterfalls and priceless art treasures—all on Waikiki’s best white-sand beach. Visitors can see a Polynesian extravaganza in the spectacular spot and fire works over the crystal blue Pacific. Today, it is a gateway to some of the world’s favorite tourist resorts.
Guam, travelers can take an opportunity to get out and see some of what the ocean has to offer—not only as a market, but as a destination as well.
Cultural Diversity
We are the world
Asia has learned a great deal from Europe and America over the past century. The latter regions can today look to the former for fresh ideas with which to leaven their tired civilizations.
The perception of tourism as a system needs to be refined. Tourism should be seen as an open system, and the relationships between this system and culture should be explored. Cultural resources act as special attractions in the areas for tourism. It should acknowledge global issues and promote understanding and trust among people. It can be a vehicle for economic and cultural development and play a key role in increasing the awareness of environmental issues.
The ethnic backgrounds of the peoples of Southeast Asia can best be understood through reference to the two major aspects of the regions’ geography: 1)its central position between the ancient cultural centers of India and China, and 2) its rugged mountain and jungle topography, which segments the mainland into three major mountain ranges (one of which extends past the mainland to provide the backbone of the Indonesian archipelago) and three broad, flat valleys. Historical Chinese influence is most evident in Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam in the tonal character of the principal languages of each nation and in the physical appearance of most of their people, whose original homelands are thought to have been in southwestern China.
In contrast to the nations of Southeast Asia, Japan is remarkably homogeneous. Its long isolation as an island archipelago has helped produced fairly uniform cultural traditions. Social stratification throughout most of the recorded past has been based upon feudal divisions between the nobility, its retainers, merchants, peasants, and various outcast groups stigmatized by their occupations. Today, merchants, peasants, and outcasts still continue as fairly distinct social categories. Industrialization of the nation, however, has helped create a vast array of new occupations. Chief among the effects of industrialization has been the emergence of a new middle class, comprised of white collar employees of large corporations and government bureaucracies, which has gradually replaced in power and influence the old middle class of small businessmen and landowners.
The lowland cultures of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Burma have been much more profoundly influenced by India, which provided their principal religion, Theravada Buddhism, and many aspects of daily cultural life. South of Thailand, in present-day Malaysia and Indonesia, Indian influence has a depth that can be seen in the Hindu character of the region’s ancient empires and in the more recent dominance of Islam, which arrived via Indian traders.
Aborigine and Multi-culturalism
“To find my heritage: my family/My home and identity/To find the person who was lost to me/…. The Aborigine!” These sentiments expressed by an aboriginal poet are remarkable. Aborigines, as children, were torn from their families and raised in an alien culture. “It is the story of attempted genocide,” says Peter Read, a historian at Australian National University.
With the arrogance of missionaries, many people thought the best thing they could do for aborigines was to assimilate them into their own culture. Reassimilation is more difficult than locating a lost family. Though aborigines by blood, the lost generations are culturally estranged.
“I was told I was an American Polynesian.” Other children were passed off as Javanese, Indian, Maori or Fijian. Now they are turning the tables. As children they had no control over their lives. With the emergence of multi-culturalism, everybody should respect the real, true residents of the land.
Conclusion
There are points of disagreement, to be sure, but the emerging principles share the same broad outline. The bottom line includes strong family values, respect for authority, consensus in decision-making, and supremacy of the community over the individual. Hardly startling, yet to their proponents many of these ideas seem unacceptable or forgotten in the U.S. and Europe.
Many virtues associated with Asian success are not uniquely Asian. Other societies also place importance on frugality, dedication to work, willingness to innovate, strong teamwork and competitiveness. To many of them, Asian success begins at home. The family as “the sacred sanctuary within which personal integrity is fostered and the finest values are transmitted from one generation to the next.”
“Family ties are considered the most important element in society,” says Dewi Fortuna Anwar, the head of the regional and international affairs division of Jakarta’s Center for Political and Regional Studies, “If a [family] member does really well, he has a responsibility toward those who are not as fortunate.”
Some Asians have refrained from speaking out in favor of such ingrained characteristics as discipline, hard work, thrift, limited democracy and firm, paternalistic government for fear of being mocked as making excuses for authoritarianism or even repression. But development, in its broadest sense, is the best evaluation of any value or system. However, they should not preach, be smug or give the impression that they have little more to learn from other civilizations. One person advised: “We must be careful not to mismanage the growing insecurity of the West by adding fuel to the fire. In particular, we must never become anti-white. If East and West retreat into racial positions, serious conflicts will be inevitable.” People should make the effort of sharing, of reaching out. It must never become one of aggression or self-aggrandizement.
Without doubt, the world is taking note of Asian and Oceanian arguments. The intellectual debate is increasingly filtering into university lecture halls and Western news media. Indeed, whether the listeners agree or not, people in Asia and Oceania are providing a confident, well-considered world view which cannot be ignored.
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