discussion 3938

Initial Post (about 5 sentences)

Tourism turns local people and places into consumer goods, changing the balance of global and local. For local people and places, tourism often brings global goods but comes at the expense of local goods. The objective of this week’s assignment is to understand the ways tourism transforms local people and places.

(1) Choose one of the places Pico Iyer visits in Video Night in Kathmandu.

Describe two ways international travel and tourism have transformed that place – a physical transformation and a human (social or cultural) transformation.

(2) Now “visit” the same place, either using Google Maps Street View, a travel video from YouTube, or a combination of the two. (Feel free to enhance your visit with a Google Image search, etc.) What evidence do you see today of the same two transformations?

(3) Finally reflect on your observations. Are these transformations you and Pico Iyer witnessed good or bad for the local place and people? Articulate one way they are good and one way they are bad.

Response Post (one sentence )

Read through the initial posts in your group. Ask a follow-up question – something you’re curious about or would like to know more about – of a fellow student (preferably one that doesn’t already have a follow-up question). Keep it simple and respectful.

others post:

(1) Select one of the locations visited by Pico Iyer in “Video Night” in Kathmandu. Describe two ways in which international travel and tourism have changed the region-physical change and human (social or cultural) change.

When Pico Iyer spent a lot of time playing in Asia, he went to a city I am very familiar with, Hong Kong. Hong Kong is actually a very complicated city with complicated transportation, complicated politics and complicated culture. Hong Kong has always been an international metropolis. For a long time, he was known as the only entrance to the mainland from the Western world and the pearl of the East. International travel and tourism make this international metropolis more diverse. People here speak Cantonese and English, few people speak Mandarin. Everywhere in the streets you can see places where you can exchange currency. Because of the development of tourism, more and more people come to Hong Kong, and large and high-end hotels are everywhere. Because there are too many people, the streets of Hong Kong are crowded and the lanes are narrow. Many buses are double-decker buses.
A

(2) Now, whether you use Google Maps Street View, YouTube travel videos or a combination of the two, you can “visit” the same place. (Feel free to use Google image search, etc. to enhance traffic). What evidence do you see today of the same two conversions?

I have been to Hong Kong many times because of the ACT exam. Today I checked again the place where I was staying for the exam, Kowloon. I compared the year I went to the exam with the Kowloon district today, and I found that in recent years, there has been basically no change in the urban construction of Hong Kong. So I watched a documentary about the development of Hong Kong at Bilibili (a Chinese video website). I found that Hong Kong on Google Maps is now larger than before. It is because the land area of Hong Kong can not support the crowds who have poured into Hong Kong, so they can only make land around the sea. However, in recent years, because of environmental protection issues, the act of reclaiming land from the sea has not been a well-regarded project in China.

(3) Finally reflect on your observations. Are the changes you and Pico Iyer witnessed good or bad for locals and people? Clarify one way, they are good, the other way is their bad.

I think that the development in these years is not good for the people of Hong Kong. Leaving aside the political reasons inherent in Hong Kong, Hong Kong has lost its strong wind in economic development. Tourism can indeed bring real economic income to many people, but the development of tourism has squeezed the housing needs of the people of Hong Kong. Expensive housing prices are common in every municipality and first-tier city in China. But no other municipality in China can be like Hong Kong. Poor People’s houses are squeezed by capitalists to live in “cage”. I once saw a photo in a residential building in Hong Kong, where people live in iron cages and they are very crowded. These people can even say that there is no human rights at all.