China is an ancient civilized¹ country. In the long river of history, Chinese people have created splendid（辉煌的） culture and great civilization. There are many historical spots and beautiful sceneries worth seeing, such as the Great Wall, the Summer Palace and some famous high mountains. They attract millions upon millions of travelers every year. With these rich resources, our government has taken great measures to prosper³ tourism. Now more and more people would like to spend money in traveling. What benefits has tourism brought to our people and our country? 

 

First of all, travel is a good way to fresh oneself. The main reasons why people travel is relaxation⁴ and pleasure. For example, having worked hard throughout the weekdays, people will find a weekend trip to nearby mountains or beaches a real relaxation. Once being immersed⁵ in the beautiful scenery, they forget all the hustle⁶ and bustle⁷（喧嚣气氛） in daily life and get themselves away from work pressure. Moreover urban people usually complain about the noisiness and the lack of greenlife. A travel to the beautiful or high mountain will help them return to nature and enjoy the grandeur⁸ of the nature. According to the statistics⁹ from CHINA DAILY, two thirds of middle class working people in Beijing choose to travel at weekends. When they return from travel, they usually feel fresh and energetic.

 

Second, travel is one of the best means for learning. People may have read or heard about something, but can never got a picture of it until they see it themselves for seeing is believing. If they are careful, they can learn much during their travel about the geography, biology and history of the place they are visiting. No matter how well educated they are, there is always a lot for them to learn through traveling. Climbing Mount² Tai, they can enjoy the Chinese calligraphy¹⁰ as well as the beautiful scenery. Visiting Li River, they can appreciate a lot of interesting folk stories as well as the local culture. So the knowledge acquired from travel is no less valuable than that from any reference¹¹ books.

 

Third, developing tourism is an important way to promote understanding and friendship either among our Chinese people or between our people and people from other countries. China is too broad to know even referring to geography magazines. A travel to the other places can help us to know more about our country especially about the local customs and local living. For most of foreign tourists, they were puzzled by Chinese history and its ancient culture and have great interests in them. I once had seven foreign teachers when I studied in Qufu Normal University. Besides being good teachers there, they all would like to spend some time traveling around our country. Coming from the Great Wall, they were amazed at Chinese's intelligence and diligence; back from Li River, they were deeply impressed by local people's hospitality¹². Back from Xi'an, they learnt more about Chinese history. All these promote understanding and friendship between my foreign teachers and their Chinese students.

 

Apart from these, tourism is also an important way to earn hard currency, which is much needed in our socialist¹³ modernization¹⁴. As a smokeless industry, it does no harm to ecology environment and contributes a lot to improve local people's living standard under good management. Also it is a door to attract more foreign investment to prosper local economy. 

 

However, I want to mention that there are still some problems existing in tourism. For example, some restaurant owners or some souvenir peddlers overcharge some tourists. The room service is too crowded to book during the two golden weeks. What's worse is that the ecological¹⁵ balance has been destroyed in some resorts because of the improper¹⁶ management. All these kind of problems need to be solved by the efforts of people and governments.

 

In a word, with the rich tourist resources in China and the obvious advantages of tourism, I believe the tourist industry will be further developed. It will not only play an increasingly role in our economic growth, but also serve as a friendly link between the Chinese people and people from other countries. In order to solve the problems existed in it, either our country or people should strengthen the sense of environmental protection, and the development more intelligently.

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