China tour guides adapt to new ways and careers

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Yang Changqingwent up and down Huangshan (Yellow Mountains) dozens of times in the past week.

He climbed the top of the 1,864m (6,115 feet) range. He also got to the center of a walking bridge getting into a popular bodybuilding routine to attract viewersonline.

The 37-year-old tour guide mostly just keeps posing in front of empty shops and abandoned scenic spots, panning his camera for his viewers to share in the experience from their phones.

Huangshan Park, the picturesque area in China’s southeastern Anhui province around the mountains, is a popular tourist destination during the Labour Day holiday long weekend, with no entry fee.

In 2020, in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, park authorities shut down the attraction and now during the May 1 weekend, visitor numbers are well over the daily limit of 20,000.

In 2021, with the pandemic situation improving in China, tourism figures recovered to 93 per cent of the pre-pandemic levels.

This year, with China fighting its latest and persistent Covid-19 wave of the highly infectious Omicron variant, domestic tourism over the holiday ending Wednesday is expected to be affected.

Tour guides have also adapted and switched their careers,with others learning new ways to do their jobs like online tours.

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