The 7th International Tourism Festival Xinjiang China

The 7th China Xinjiang International Tourism Festival kicked off in Karamay Xinjiang on June 25, 2011. According to the official statistics, over 200 distinguished guests both from 26 countries and 24 provinces in China attended the the Xinjiang Tourism Promotion Meeting yesterday afternoon as well as the grand opening ceremony of the 7th International Tourism Xinjiang China yesterday evening, which opened the curtain of the week long inspection tours of both the north Xinjiang and West Xinjiang 2011.

The size of this year’s Xinjiang internatoional tourism festival is smaller in size in comparison with that of last year. There are a few reasons behind the clear decrease.

Some participants couldn’t fly on time from Beijing to Urumqi on June 24, 2011 because of the heavy downpour which had started from 4:30pm on June 23, 2011, causing lots of delays and cancellations of the flights.

Some people have to give up due to the coming of the tourism peak season, After second thought, they prefer to work rather than participate the tourism festival. In addition, a small number of would-be attendeers are a little bit worried at the safety situation in Xinjiang.

Xinjiang Tourism Promotion Meeting ( part of the 7th International Tourism Festival)

The 2 hour tourism promotion meeting was held on the second floor of the Builiding No.1 of Karamay Government starting at 5:40 pm June 25, 2011. The director of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region gave an excellent and persuasive speech on the Tourim Promotion in Xinjiang. He introduced that there are six unique themed tours in Xinjiang – 1) Silk Road Tour 2) Special Interest Tour 3) Trip to the original ecological natural scenery 4) photographer Tour 5)Xinjiang Folk Customs 6)Xinjiang Ice and Snow Tour.

The tourism director also gave us a clear account of the travel agency situation in Xinjiang. At the end of 2010, there are 441 travel agencies, 488 star rated hotels, 12 of them are five star hotels. There ae 168 scenery spots rated as level 3, level 4 and level 5. There are totally 94325 registered tour guides in Xinjiang. 200,000 people are directly involved in the tourism industry and over 800,000 people are indirectly involved.

Then the Karamay mayor delivered a speech introducing the basic knowedge about the ctiy of Karamay. He says “Karamay means “black oil. He contunes that 50 years ago, Karamay used to be a desolated Gobi – no grass, no water, even on birds. Karamay now has already become a mutifuctional and inhabitable city, full of vitality and vigor. Karamay has a population of four hundred thousand people with a total area of 7733 square kilometers. It has 38 ethnical groups including Han, Uygur, Kazak, Mogolian and so on.

The Ceremony of the Grand Opening of the 7th International Tourism Xinjiang China.

The ceremony coupled with the art performances started from 10:00pm (still some sunshine, a longer daytime in Xinjiang and finished at 1:00am, June 25, 2011! Within the 3 hours ceremony and performance, about one hour time was given to the various speeches delivered by the high ranking officials from the Xinjiang government as well as two foreigners. I sense a little bit complaint from the participants about the wordy speeches.

Though the speeches are long and a little overlapping, the 2 hour art performance afterwards was fantastic! Below is the list of the performance with photos:

Honorable Guests are coming 1