TAIWAN: 26 China Tourists Killed In Taiwan Bus Fire

A Taiwan bus taking mainland Chinese tourists to the airport for their flight home caught fire and crashed Tuesday, killing all 26 on board as desperate passengers struggled in vain to escape.

The disaster was the latest in a series that have called into question Taiwan's safety record.

The bus, with flames shooting from the front, had rammed into an expressway barrier near Taipei.

The images showed thick plumes of smoke and burned-out wreckage at the roadside.

A police spokesman said the bus had caught fire before it crashed into the barrier but gave no reason.

"All the people on the bus died," Lin Kuan-cheng, spokesman for the National Fire Agency,said.

"At this stage it is still not clear why no passengers escaped from the bus."

The bodies of the victims remained inside the bus as police and prosecutors examined the site.

One image in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper showed two men trying to smash the windows with fire extinguishers as the doors of the vehicle remained shut.

The Liberty Times newspaper quoted an unnamed eyewitness as saying passengers were pounding the bus windows for help as the driver swerved sharply before the crash.

A firefighter at the scene said there were no survivors still calling for help when they arrived.

The tour group of 24 people, three children, 15 women and six men was from China's northeastern city of Dalian, Taiwan's interior ministry said.

A Taiwanese driver and Taiwanese tour guide were also killed, the National Fire Agency confirmed.

The group were on their way to Taipei's main Taoyuan airport for a 4:30 pm flight back to Dalian after an eight-day tour of the island. The accident happened shortly before 1:00 pm.

- String of accidents -Chinese tour groups have increasingly visited Taiwan in recent years after a boom in mainland tourism.

CHINA: Sanya, Shanghai Any Destination In China Depend On Your Country Of Origin

Whether you end up in Sanya, Shanghai or another destination in China seems to depend partly on what country you come from.

How do you choose your favourite spot in China when there is just so many to choose from? Ardi Pulaj is well acquainted with the problem.

You just have to give up trying.

Mr Pulaj can run off a list of about 30 places stretched across the country that he has visited, many of which he now regards with close affection.

China offers so many options for travelling, and each of them is unique in what it has to offer, A Beijing reident says.

There are so many places that can be considered favourites, such as Sanya (Hainan province), Dalian (Liaoning province) and Shanghai.”

In Sanya it was the weather and beaches that took his fancy because, he said, they allowed him to get away from the fast pace of big-city life.

Dalian made it to his shortlist because of its pleasant character, cleanliness and the fact that this city on the coast offers respite from the kind of hot summer weather you get in Beijing.

For him, Shanghai is also admirable, “a convenient city with the true spirit of a metropolis”.

At a tourism industry conference in Kunming, Yunnan province, in November, Gold Palm, a tourism consulting service in Shanghai, unveiled a list of 10 Chinese tourism destinations popular with visitors from outside the mainland.

Gold Palm said it discerned a clear difference in favourite destinations named as a product of where tourists came from.

For example, while many American visitors had Chengdu and Jiuzhaigou, both in Sichuan province, at the top of the list of their favourite destinations in China, Japanese opted for Shanghai and Beijing, South Koreans plumped for Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, and Thais had a soft spot for the ancient city of Fenghuang, also in Hunan.

Those from the US favour places offering leisure, while spots featuring unusual and even challenging landscape appeal to tourists from South Korea, said the executive director of Gold Palm, Liu Dan. Zhangjiajie, Huangshan, Fenghuang and Hangzhou appeal to South Koreans because of the scenery, he said.

“A laid-back lifestyle and distinctive cuisine — and pandas — make Sichuan highly attractive to Americans.”

The Japanese like urban scenic spots and Europeans look for culture, which takes them to places such as Leshan in Sichuan and Xi’an in Shaanxi province for ancient historical heritage, Mr Liu said.

About 128 million tourists from outside the mainland flocked to such attractions last year, comprising 26 million foreign tourists and the rest being from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Inbound tourism grew seven per cent in the first 10 months of this year compared with the corresponding period last year, Mr Liu said, adding that the number of such tourists is expected to reach 130 million this year, thanks to increasing numbers of tourists from Japan and South Korea.

The number of South Korean tourists to the mainland rose 48 per cent this year, compared with the corresponding period last year.

Beijing alone drew in more than 300,000 visitors from South Korea in the first nine months of this year. South Korea was the top source country, followed by Japan, with 190,000.

Last year, more than 828,000 Japanese tourists visited Shanghai, accounting for 10 per cent of all inbound tourists to the mainland, Mr Liu said.

Cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an remain the all-time favourites among foreign tourists, said Yu Liangbing, deputy general manager of China Youth Travel Service Co in Beijing.

But areas with attractive scenery are luring more visitors thanks to word of mouth and the impact of movies. Mr Yu attributed the popularity of Zhangjiajie partly to the film Avatar, some of which were shot there. Yichang is popular because of the Three Gorges Dam spanning the Yangtze River, he said.

The route from the upper reaches of the Yangtze, starting from Chengdu or Chongqing across Jiangxi and Hubei provinces to Shanghai is one of the most popular among inbound tourists.

Silk Road- themed trips featuring Xi’an and going all the way to Dunhuang in Gansu province, or journeys tracking the Grand Canal from Beijing across Shandong, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu and Zhejiang to Shanghai are also becoming more popular, he said.

One of the agency’s most popular tours is an eight-day trip that takes in Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai, costing about $1,000 (£650).

“Some tourists have begun to warm up to places in north-western China, such as the Xinjiang Uygur and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions,” Mr Yu said.

His company arranged for 40 American tourists to drive themselves from Sichuan to the Tibet autonomous region this summer.

More tourists from the US are expected to visit the mainland as the China-US Year of Tourism is launched next year, he said.

Mr Pulaj advised would-be tourists to the mainland never to travel during national holidays because, he said, there are so many people on the move it is impossible to have an enjoyable time.

He had recently seen “gorgeous” photos of scenery in Tibet, and hoped to visit it soon, he said. He is also keen to visit Yunnan where, he said, places such as Lijiang, Dali and Shangri-la give “the perfect sense of natural beauty”.