国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

chinadaily.com.cn
left corner left corner
China Daily Website

Ditch the tour guide, hit the road

Updated: 2012-08-04 11:08
By Wang Jingshu in New York ( China Daily)

After a 13-hour flight from Shanghai, Aileen Zhang is fatigued but eager to begin her first trip abroad.

She lands at San Francisco International Airport, retrieves her luggage from the carousel and passes through US Customs. Then it's off to the car rental counter to pick up the car she reserved online from her home in China.

Ditch the tour guide, hit the road

Software engineer Aileen Zhang tours the US in her rented Chevrolet automobile. [Photo/China Daily] 

"It's very popular among our generation to travel around by renting vehicles," said Zhang, a software engineer in her late 20s. "Travel agencies might give people well-organized schedules, but what I want is a leisurely trip that's more free - not to rush from one tourist spot to another."

During July, she stopped in Los Angeles and other cities along California's Pacific Coast Highway before driving inland to Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming before ending up at Yellowstone National Park, which straddles three states.

Tourism from China to the US has been on the rise since 2007, when the State Department relaxed its rules to make it easier for Chinese citizens to get short-term visas. The trend is expected to continue: About 1.1 million Chinese visited the US in 2011, and the number is projected to reach 3.2 million visitors in 2016, according to the Commerce Department's Office of Travel and Tourism Industries.

"There is an explosion of travelers coming from China to the US," said Skip Hull, vice-president of CIC Research Inc, which conducts surveys on behalf of the federal government and private companies.

Washington's increase in the number of visa slots available to applicants in China this year is also helping push numbers to record highs, including scores of younger Chinese who prefer to travel by rental car, Hull said.

"Similar to the 1980s and Japan, there is a huge volume of independent travelers from China visiting the US," he said. "We think that, over time, there will be many more younger Chinese traveling on their own instead of depending on travel agencies."

Among travelers to the US who rent cars, the top three countries of origin in 2011 were Britain, Germany and Japan, according to a report by the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration. China didn't appear in the report because its sample size was less than 400 renters, but Hull is sure the number will jump, especially given the "motorized generation" of Chinese in their 20s and early 30s.

"It would be lame to travel around the US other than by driving," said Yang Liu, a 28-year-old from Beijing who is planning a trip to the US in September. "There are so many desirable places in the US, and traveling by yourself, by car, is a good way to get around and see the real America."

Yang, who hopes to experience a "typical American lifestyle" during her visit, said, "The last thing I want to do is follow tour guides who organize everything while I just take photos in arranged places with people from my home country."

China's younger generation "doesn't share the same cultural history as the older generations in terms of automobiles", said Hull. The country's fast-growing auto industry acclimated Chinese youth to driving and cars from an early age, instilling a desire to explore the world "on their own".

Previous Page 1 2 Next Page

...

...
...
苗栗市| 海城市| 沙雅县| 仪陇县| 会同县| 陵川县| 平武县| 无锡市| 普定县| 句容市| 环江| 龙口市| 久治县| 邓州市| 固原市| 拜泉县| 罗田县| 大化| 绥芬河市| 台北县| 调兵山市| 阿坝县| 屏东市| 遂川县| 南丹县| 奈曼旗| 洞头县| 耒阳市| 西充县| 青河县| 鄂托克旗| 鸡西市| 瑞金市| 孝感市| 资中县| 敦煌市| 徐水县| 壶关县| 霍林郭勒市| 新晃| 临漳县|