GOLDEN WEEKS - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 221

Chinese were able to see greater horizons, and became so much more perceptive, tourist
professionals.”
That year the Great Wall Hotel opened in Beijing, the first of what would become a
boom of modern chrome-and-glass hotels that hasn't abated. The hotel was a Sino-Amer-
ican venture. Dean Ho, now of Unison Building Systems in Shanghai, helped put together
the deal. He represented a private investor in the project that included the Beijing branch
of the China National Tourist Office as the equity partner, a model that continues today.
The hotel, he told me, proved “highly profitable” both for the foreign investors and for the
Chinese who were the majority owners. “One hundred percent funded by American dol-
lars, one hundred percent filled with foreign tourists who paid in American dollars while
all local labor costs were paid in the Chinese currency renminbi,” he said.
Foreign tourists still traveled in groups with itineraries largely under the control of the
official state tourism agency: the visitors had no choice over their hotels or restaurants, and
their tour guides were trained by the government to deliver a narrow political message.
Nothing better exemplified this than the June 1989 bloodbath at Tiananmen Square,
when the Chinese People's Liberation Army broke up a popular, nonviolent demonstra-
tion by young Chinese asking for democracy. The soldiers, under orders from Deng Xiaop-
ing, used lethal force and murdered thousands of citizens, leaving their bodies littering
Tiananmen and the nearby streets. The world was outraged, but most of the foreign tour-
ists in China were oblivious. If they weren't in Beijing, they didn't know anything had
happened. All the news had been blocked out, and the guides were told to stick to the
standard praise about their country's progress. “A tour group in the south kept traveling
and didn't know what was going on in Tiananmen until they called home to check on
their families,” said Dawson. “I don't think the Chinese will ever give up that kind of con-
trol.”
That episode exemplified China's political quandary as it focused on economic gains
while papering over any questions about human rights or protecting the environment. The
government wanted to create a tourist market inside China by wooing foreign investors.
At the same time, the Chinese government wanted to censor the image presented to the
foreigners through their system of guides and marketing, with a uniform interpretation of
China's recent past, an enthusiastic presentation of contemporary life and little room to
hear an alternative view.
China had to become much more accommodating. Itineraries expanded far beyond
the once bare-bones tour of Beijing, Shanghai and a train trip to Hong Kong. China gradu-
ally allowed tourists throughout the vast nation from Harbin in the north near the Russi-
an border to Guilin in the south near Vietnam. Other rules were relaxed. Tourists could
eat in private restaurants along the bund in Shanghai. Bars were opening in Beijing and
Shanghai.