American Airlines Plans to Inaugurate Air Routes From Chicago to China

American Airlines plans to inaugurate Chicago-Beijing and Chicago-Shanghai, two direct air routes, on April 1, 2001. At present, no American airlines have opened direct air routes from Chicago to China. The two air routes will be served by B777 aircraft with 237 seats. The route will have one flight per week from Chicago to Shanghai and three flights from Chicago too Beijing. American Airlines has code-sharing cooperation relations with China Eastern Airlines, and both partners operate the Los Angeles and San Francisco air routes in the United States and the Beijing and Shanghai air routes in China.

Special-interest Tours Become More Attractive

Zhongwei County in northwestern China's Ningxia Autonomous Region is developing tours with unique features. The county has been receiving positive responses about its special-interest tours from domestic and overseas travelers.

Some tourism areas in Zhongwei County are distinguished by their desert ecology and multi-ethnic folklore. The Great Wall built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), site of the ancient waterwheel, sand slopes and canyons, and typical rural scenery are appealing to visitors.

After promoting the Desert Tour and the Yellow-River Tour tourists in 1998, the county built two campsites in desert. Local travel agencies have prepared various tourist projects. Tourists can now enjoy themselves by riding on back of a camel, searching for water in the desert, participating in a bonfire party, and drifting on sheep-skin rafts.

Hotels Provide Peasant Food

Hotels and restaurants in some cities of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region are luring tourists with typical peasant food.

Liangyou Hotel in Nangxia's Jingyuan County has become well-known for its Wild Vegetables Banquet. Visitors can pick wild vegetables themselves. They can then taste their special flavor after picking them.

Green or heathy food is popular and welcomed by visitors. These foods include oat-flour pastries, buckwheat-flour round crackers, and potato-flour bran cakes.

CTS Initiates Five Tour Programs

To welcome the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, China Travel Service (CTS) will work with over one thousand overseas Chinese representatives to organize activities for the celebration in Beijing and for sightseeing in other parts of China.

To welcome Macao's return to the motherland at the end of this year, CTS has planned the following activities: first, in coordination with the State Administration of Physical Culture, CTS organized the Beijing-Macao Bicycle Rally Competition. The contestants left Beijing for Macao from the Tian'anmen Square last May and will arrive at Macao in December after going through five provinces of China. Second, CTS has promoted tours to Hong Kong and Macao; tours to Guangdong and Macao; tours to Hong Kong, Macao, and the Republic of Ketea; and tours to Hong Kong, Macao, and southern Asian countries. CTS aims to let more Chinese citizens to experience the celebration atmosphere before and after Macao's return to the motherland.

In the '99 Ecotour Year, CTS has made great efforts to promote the World Horticulture Expo in Kunming. With ecology and environmental protection as the focus, CTS sponsored tree-planting tour groups, Great Wall tours on foot, and a tour of the Inner Mongolian grasslands.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Chinese travelers on tours organized by CTS can received special discounts and special gifts. For example, Chinese travelers who join the tour of Hong Kong and Macao for celebrating the 50th anniversary of the establishment of CTS will each receive a 100 yuan discount.

In addition, CTS has provided the Beijing City Tour for Thousands of Households. In line with various consumption levels of families, CTS has worked out different tourist programs suitable to the elderly, students, and intellectuals for their weekends or holidays. CTS also provides sightseeing bus services at designated places. All these programs aim to promote the travel industry and enhance the image of enterprises--better service and reasonable price.

For more information, please call: 6461-2288

Forest & Grassland Festival

Weichang Manchu and Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture in Hebei Province is holding the Forest & Grassland Festival which is scheduled to finish at end of February 2000.

During the period of the festival, singing and dance performances by Manchu and Mongolian ethnic groups are stages. Tourists can go sightseeing in the sea of forests, tour the grasslands, take a folklore tour, go hunting in the Imperial Hunting Park, or ski.

Audio Tour Guide

The Chinese History Museum in Beijing now offers digital audio tour guides for visitors. If visitors are interested in an exhibit, they can press the exhibit number on the audio machine and then listen to an explanation about the exhibit. The explanations are in Chinese, English, and Japanese.

There are now three museums in China with digital audio tour guides. The other two are the Shanghai Museum and the Henan Provincial Museum.