[quote=“Abacus”]
Nobody should expect Taiwan to be an ‘it’ place to visit in Asia but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a nice vacation.[/quote]
I agree with this. There’s a reason why France is the superpower in terms of tourism while Belgium isn’t, but it doesn’t mean that the latter isn’t worth a visit.
You’re not wrong but we are talking about different things. You are refering to education which I agree has put this notion in people’s head as a form of kmt nation-building propoganda. What I am talking about is how official tourism materials have tried to brand Taiwan. Before 2002 there really was no tourism industry as we now know it. There was tourism of coure but thr ROC was presented as Little China more out of habit than design.
So it’s possible both that the people you were meeting had an outdated notion of Taiwan at the same time the tourism bureau was promoting Taiwan as Taiwan.
Taiwan has one mil plus Japanese visitors and one mil plus Chinese visitors. Does it need more ?
No. We need less Chinese visitors. Seriously they need to stop coming. :raspberry:
No. We need less Chinese visitors. Seriously they need to stop coming. :raspberry:[/quote]
Hmm, it’s easy to blame the Chinese visitors, but the government is just as much to blame. Infrastructure at places like Jiufen is woefully insufficient for dealing with the number of people going there. It was that way even before the tourbuses filled with Chinese people, and it’s worse now. I think overall the Chinese presence is not inherently damaging to Taiwan; the problem is that too many people are crowding into areas not built to handle them. We could restrict incoming Chinese people, but infrastructure upgrade is also essential.
Now that they have landing visas in Peng-Kin-Ma, I wonder how those islands are going to be affected. Anyone heading out that way soon?
I’m with HongKongPhooey in this one. Chinese and Chinese money are welcome (well, perhaps they need to improve their manners… they are the reason why I hate Taoyuan airport), but may be Taiwan needs to improve its infrastructures a bit…
Who’s HongKon— oh. 
The individual Chinese tourists are welcome. The groups are a drain on resources and numerous reports have shown that they do not add much to the economy as most of the money goes to tour companies in Hong Kong and China.
Taiwanese taxpayers are subsidizing Chinese tours with their tax money going to the needed infrastructure and that is not sensible.
Uhmmm… but I guess that it’s “normal” to have foreign touring companies visiting Taiwan. May be they should be paying some extra taxes or something, but I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that. Also the visitors have to pay meals and entrance tickets and so on.
I may have misunderstood you here, but I don’t see a problem in tax money going to infrastructure because this benefits locals as well as Chinese visitors and visitors from other countries. Buses will continue to cause jams on the one or two streets that lead into Jiufen. Spending money to try and relieve that somehow is in no way a bad thing.
There’s an easy solution to that: In some parts of Spain, they charge the tourists the “ecotax”: It’s supposed to pay for the increase in waste and the extra amount of cleaning needed after a horde of tourists comes in, throws trash around, and poops in all the toilets. They charge that amount into the hotel bills, and the hotels transfer the money to the government. If improving infrastructures is also part of the deal, they could do something similar.
On the other hand, making new infrastructures will also benefit the inhabitants of those target rural areas, which is good. If not because of the tourism, the Taipei-based government wouldn’t probably allocate the necessary resources.
I may have misunderstood you here, but I don’t see a problem in tax money going to infrastructure because this benefits locals as well as Chinese visitors and visitors from other countries. Buses will continue to cause jams on the one or two streets that lead into Jiufen. Spending money to try and relieve that somehow is in no way a bad thing.[/quote]
But it doesn’t help locals in most cases. I gave the example of Kinmen before were hundreds of thousands of Chinese visitors has meant the local gov has to build toilets and sewage lines to deal with this, plus fixed road damage (and expand the roads to take up more of the edges of villages) caused by tour buses going from the ferry terminal to the airport. The problem is Chinese do not stay in Kinmen so they do not spend or pay anything.
Yushan National Park started charging an entrance fee to help pay for the increase in maintenance to facilities caused by the expansion of Chinese tourists.
I haven’t seen any new locally-useful infrastructure built because of Chinese tourism (minus a few lookouts perhaps) but lots of money has to be spent in maintenance which is footed by locals.
Then it sounds like poor implementation, but not poor policy. I’m sure the residents in Jiufen would like better transport in and out, and making it less of a nightmare could bring more business for them. The question is if the government is getting its priorities right, and well, you know the government…
What do you mean by better transport? What are the options there, really? They made the road broader closer to Ruifang and built a big parking lot for tour buses half way up where tourist have to transfer to the regular buses. I don’t understand why they have to use regular sized buses on those winding mountain road, especially from Jiufen further on to Jinguashi and Shuinandong. Using smaller buses could make the traffic it bit more fluent, but apart from that I don’t see what they could change to make it better. Local businesses would certainly not welcome a ban of private cars up the mountain. Also, telling from the number of tourists going there every day I think business has never been better for them, so I am not quite understanding your post.
I’ll put it this way. I don’t think anyone would agree with the statement: “It’s not a pain in the ass to get to Jiufen.” Because it is. I’m hardly a civil engineer, but I would suggest what you mentioned: banning cars other than those of permanent residents (at the VERY least on weekends), establishing a large parking lot at the base of the mountain, and running shuttle buses up and down at regular intervals, kind of like a gondola system without the ropes. They could also consider a real gondola, or institute traffic controls to prevent too many people from heading up at once.
I think that if you take in account the terrain, it is not that bad to get to Jiufen… I hope you’re not proposing to make a Taipei-Jiufen tunnel, or destroy a chunk of mountain for making a more straight road…
I understand what you mean. Getting there is not easy. But because of that business for the people there is not bad. It’s just inconvenient for tourists, who come anyway, in large numbers. Small shuttle buses from the car park (there is already one) would be good. But I guess the bus company running the Zhongxiao-Fuxing to Jiufen service, which is quite popular with tourists, would like to keep that service. Banning private cars would mean that the locals could not rent out parking spaces any longer. So they would definitely object that, especially for weekends, where they can charge more. Also a shuttle bus would not be able to serve places of interest that are not at Jiufen/Jinguashi/Shuinandong. You cannot disallow people taking Route 102 further on to Shuangxi for example. That’s quiet a scenic road with no public transport. Lots of people like to drive that road. A gondola from the coast up to Jiufen would be spectacular, but very costly, not sure if the terrain is suitable for that, though. This would be good for Keelung too, cause tourists would potentially start taking the train there instead of Ruifang, and then a bus from Keelung to whereever the gondola station would be (I guess it should be at the coast somewhere. Don’t think you could build a gondola station at Ruifang.).
without Chinese tourists, what will happen to Taipei 101? the Chinese are the only ones capable of buying most of the overpriced stuff there.
[quote=“Hokwongwei”]
Hmm, it’s easy to blame the Chinese visitors, but the government is just as much to blame. Infrastructure at places like Jiufen is woefully insufficient for dealing with the number of people going there. It was that way even before the tourbuses filled with Chinese people, and it’s worse now. I think overall the Chinese presence is not inherently damaging to Taiwan; the problem is that too many people are crowding into areas not built to handle them. We could restrict incoming Chinese people, but infrastructure upgrade is also essential.
Now that they have landing visas in Peng-Kin-Ma, I wonder how those islands are going to be affected. Anyone heading out that way soon?[/quote]
Basically what Muchaman said. Individual Chinese tourists=more than welcome. Chinese tour groups=gtfo.
the other problem is that Chinese tour groups only frequent the same businesses on their tour of the island instead of spreading the money out to many different small businesses. Western centric tourism does this to an extent in places but not as bad as the Chinese tour groups.