The Yellow Dragon Hotel of Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, seemed to be especially crowded as more than 120 distingushed guests from some 40 domestic international travel services and about 30 overseas travel agencies gathered in the famous tourist city to conduct investigations on a newly-launched tourist route----"a cultural tour in Golden Triangle of Hangzhou".

In order to attract more overseas tourists and visitors from HK, Macao and Taiwan, Hangzhou, a world-famous tourist city known as "Paradise on the Earth", launched three newly-integrated tourist routes---the "Golden Triangle in East China" covering Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing which is designed to cater to overseas tourists from European and North American markets. The second route is the "tour to famous mountains and lakes" that are designed to target HK, Macao, Taiwan and southeastern Asian markets. The route covers the West Lake, Thousand-islet-Lake and Mountain Huang, The third route is the "golden triangle of Hangzhou" that are facing the Japan, S. Lorea and southwast Aidan markets. the route covers Hangzhou, Wuzhen and Shaoxing.

The tourist route of "Golden Triangle in East China", with Shanghai as its core and Hangzhou and SUzhou as its two wings, is seen as one of China's maturest tourist zones. After the three cities join hands in developing overseas tourist markets, they are sure to become more competitive. For this reason, the State Tourism Administration has decided to spend two to three years to cultivate the tourist route into a major tourist product for European and North American tourists.

(www.cnzj.org.cn 08/22/2001)