How to Be a Good Tourist

We travel not only for work but also for fun and learning. Restaurants, galleries, temples and architecture...These places are like homes for people who live and work there. How would you want visitors to behave in your own home? 【小题1】 There are many ways of doing this without sacrificing our own holiday.

Do your homework. 【小题2】 Guides will help you when you get to the site, but is that the best place to go? Is it popular only because the one-day tourist can see it easily or because it is really a worthwhile place to visit？You’d better check it out.

【小题3】 Walk around, even if in the streets closest to your hotel. Eat in local restaurants. Talk to the locals. Learn a few in the local language and use them. You will surely get a smile from the hotel staff and street sellers.

Help preserve the sites. Most of the sites you visit may be visited by millions of people a year, so care needs to be taken to allow others to enjoy them as well. Some of these monuments are so old and fragile that they are sensitive to the touch of hands or bags and shows. 【小题4】 This way, you don’t encourage the use of those plastic bags that fly all over many sites.

And here’s the big one — good manners are nearly universal. 【小题5】 If that doesn’t sound like you, then give the world a break and stay home.

Siberian Tiger is the largest feline (猫科动物) in the world and is known as the king of the forest. In the 1980s, it was listed as one of the first­class national protected animals of China. To preserve this valuable species, the Siberian Tiger Park was built in 1996 in Heilongjiang Province.

The park is located on the north bank of the Songhua River to the northwest of Harbin, occupying an area of 1,440，000 square meters. It is the largest natural park for wild Siberian tigers in the world at present. There are over 500 purebred (纯种的) Siberian tigers here. What’s more, visitors can also see white tigers, lions, leopards, and pumas as well as Bengali tigers.

It is a large park divided into ten areas, including the mature tiger area, the young tiger area, the walking area and the platform area for viewing the tigers.

The mature tiger area has an area of 360,000 square meters with 30 unruly (难驾驭的) Siberian tigers wandering there. The tigers in this area are all about 7 or 8 years old. And in the young tiger area, there are over 40 young lovely, active tigers about 2 years old. Visitors can see some of them playing and fighting with each other in a pool nearby, and others are kept in the walking area, staying together.

For visitors who love to see exciting activities, the park is also a perfect place. In addition to viewing the tigers walking leisurely in the open air, visitors can buy animals to feed them, including ducks, chickens, and even cows. Park employees will set the living animals free among the tigers. Visitors can see the unique live action of tigers preying on (捕食) them.

In addition, there is a free Popular Science Exhibition Hall in the park. In the exhibition hall, people can see information on tigers in pictures and samples as well as in words, which helps to complete what we know.

Voluntourism is a type of tourism in which travellers participate in volunteer work, usually for a charity or a non-profit, Most often, voluntourists travel for the specific purpose of volunteering in an organized way for specific causes, but others simply include volunteer aspects to a traditional vacation experience.

Much like sustainable tourism as a whole, the legitimacy (合法性) or success of a voluntourism program depends highly on how it is managed. When done the right way, it can help communities grow and truly provide benefits to a specific cause. But it’s up to the individual volunteer, too, who has the added responsibility of staying informed and setting their destinations up for success. Ken Budd, author of the award-winning memoir The Voluntourist, says that countless organizations around the world create lasting results. The writer, who volunteered in at least six countries, speaks for it, such as teaching English in a Costa Rican elementary school that relied on volunteers when they couldn’t afford teachers.

However, not all voluntourism programs are helping. A reporter for The New York Times wrote in 2016 about their experience with a group of people building a school in Haiti: “These people knew nothing about how to construct a building. Collectively they had spent thousands of dollars to fly here to do a job that Haitian bricklayers could have done far more quickly. Imagine how many classrooms might have been built if they had donated that money rather than spending it to fly down themselves. Perhaps those Haitian bricklayers could have found weeks of employment instead of out of a job, at least for several days.”

If an organization can get free labor from an unskilled volunteer, they’re not spending money hiring locals to do the same work for a fee. In a poverty-stricken economy where residents are already struggling to find jobs, funds that go towards digging a well or building a school will have more of an impact if they stay within the local economy. Taking work from locals can prevent developing communities from self-establishment. Not to mention, volunteers who are untrained in whatever service they are providing can sometimes actually end up holding back progress.