|
KATHMANDU, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- On the eve of national tourism campaign "Nepal Tourism Year" (NTY-2011), Nepal has unveiled two Chinese books on Sunday targeting Nepali tour guides and Nepalis who have little Chinese language background.
Since Nepali government has projected northern neighbor China as its second largest market after southern neighbor India, government as well as tourism entrepreneurs are paying high attention toward Chinese tourists at present.
Nepal is observing the year 2011 as the year of tourism with the aim of alluring more than one million international tourists among which more than 100,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit the country.
"Nepali government has given high priority to Chinese tourists visiting Nepal as per its policy. Our target is to increase Chinese tourists each year," said Kishor Thapa, Secretary at the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation.
According to him, those Chinese visitors coming to Nepal are dominantly tourists and businessmen.
"The number of Chinese visiting to Nepal is soaring up every year and language has been the major barrier. I hope recently released books will help to wipe out that language barrier and soothe easy communication between Nepalis and Chinese people," Thapa added.
In the year 2009, more than 35,000 Chinese visitors arrived Nepal and government has analyzed that this number can be doubled during 2011 if heedful attention paid for promotional activities in China this year.
In contrast to the soaring number of Chinese visitor arrivals in Nepal, the number of Chinese speaking Nepali tour guides are limited. There are only 40 licensed Chinese speaking tour guides in Nepal.
To fulfill this need and to ease the communication during NTY- 2011, many youngsters are learning to speak Chinese.
"There are more and more Chinese tourists coming to Nepal, they need more and more native Chinese speaking tour guides. So, many of Nepali young people want to study Chinese language to be Chinese speaking tour guides," said Liu Xinyuan, Chinese teacher at Confucius Institute in Kathmandu University.
According to her, among two books released on Sunday, one is Chinese Handbook focused on Nepali who have little Chinese language background and the other one is for Chinese speaking Nepali tour guides, which is the first tour guide Chinese book in Nepal.
Similarly, Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Qiu Guohong said that the two books have very clear Nepali translation that highlights contrast between Nepali and Chinese languages as well as culture. He added that the books will be well acknowledged by Nepali readers.
Secretary Thapa together with Qiu Guohong unveiled the two supportive Chinese books in a book releasing ceremony organized by Confucius Institute in Kathmandu University and co-organized by Nepal-China Executive Council.
|
