Last month, China gave Canada “Approved Destination” status during Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s visit to Beijing, easing the way for tour operators to arrange group trips. Lifestyle suggests the following 10 Canadian destinations for first-time visitors.
10. CN Tower
A little bit like the Shanghai Pearl TV Tower, highlights include walking over a window in the floor that gives a dizzying view of the earth 350 meters below. Chinese tourists may be disappointed the revolving restaurant lacks windowless private rooms.
9. Niagara Falls
Chinese tourists should feel comfortable here because of the pre-set view points, abundance of tour groups, and the bright colored lights, cable cars, boats and other manmade clutter that distract from the natural beauty of the place.
8. Casino-Rama
Centuries of exploitation and marginalization left the First Nations people on Rama reservation mired in hopelessness and substance addiction. To assuage their guilt and generate tax revenue without making gambling legal on Canadian soil, the government struck a deal with the First Nations people to allow gambling on their semi-autonomous lands. The residents of Rama became wealthy, fast. Many of the regular customers are Chinese-Canadians from the Toronto area.
7. Mountain climbing
Climbing mountains is a favorite activity of many Chinese people, and Canada has innumerable stunning peaks. Be warned, Canadian mountains do not have stairs, teahouses every 100 meters, or hotels at the top. The more popular peaks do have wooden huts at the bottom with electricity and rescue teams.
6. Small town Chinese restaurants
Every small town has a Chinese restaurant that looks like a 1950s Hong Kong movie set, complete with golden wallpaper and dragon motifs. Mainland Chinese people will marvel at how dishes such as egg foo young and lemon chicken ever evolved from their home cuisine.
5. Chinatowns
Unlike small-town Canada, Chinese can feel right at home in the Chinatowns of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Not only do you not need English, sometimes English won’t even work. Cantonese will get you the farthest. Restaurants, shopping malls and entire sections of town conduct business in Chinese.
4. Ottawa
Dashan’s hometown is best visited in winter, when you can skate up and down a frozen river in the center of the city and enjoy delicacies like beaver tail (Guangdong people, stop salivating… it is a kind of sweet wafflle). Ottawa is also the seat of Canada’s government, which in 2006 apologized to the Chinese for discriminatory policies from 1885 to 1947.
3. Anne of Green Gables
This farmhouse featured in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s nine-volume series about a redheaded orphan on Prince Edward Island draws thousands of tourists each year. The musical based on the book is performed each summer. PEI also has great lobsters, although they are mostly for the tourists; the locals consider them too gauche to eat.
2. Algonquin Park
Canada’s most famous park is almost half as big as Beijing municipality, but karaoke machines and late night mahjong games are not welcome, and you need to keep your chicken feet stowed carefully, because if the bears don’t get them, the raccoons will.
1. Bethune Memorial House and Memorial
The house that Canadian doctor Norman Bethune spent the first years of his life in is now a national historic site in Gravenhust, Ontario. Bethune is relatively unknown in Canada, but a hero in China for his service to the Chinese Communists in the Second Sino-Japanese War in the late 1930s. There is also a statue of Bethune in Montreal, where he advocated for socialized medicine.
bron: www.globaltimes.cn
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