Hallelujah! Renaming Chinese mountain leads to a hill of trouble

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province – It was an interesting formula.

“One Japanese tourist spends the same as two Korean tourists,” said Wang Ai Ming, an official from the Hunan tourism bureau.  “And one Korean spends as much as three Chinese tourists.”

Unfortunately for our minor functionary from Zhangjiajie, the Japanese and especially the Koreans haven’t been spending much lately.

While most of China’s economy has powered through the global recession, tourism has not.  Remote destinations like Zhangjiajie in northwestern Hunan have been hit hard.

A mountainous region of stunning beauty in the heart of China, Zhangjiajie attracted nearly as many as half a million people in the 2006-07 season.  The bulk of them came from South Korea, followed by Japan, and then so-called Greater China, includes Hong Kong and Taiwan.

But when the downturn swept east from west in late 2008, severely weakening
South Korea’s economy, the number of tourists to Zhangjiajie more than halved. 

…(read more)