Growing inbound tourism interest in China

Trips to visit scenic spots, cultural relics and gourmet restaurants are among the most popular.

"The trip was quickly booked up once we released the information online," says Zhu Lei, general manager of Ctrip's international strategic cooperation department.

The tour took in many landmark scenic spots and was designed to introduce visitors to China's wealth of tourism sights and immerse them in Chinese tradition and customs.

Ctrip and a Confucius Institute subsidiary called the Chinese Testing International Company plan to jointly develop more Sinology-related trips and arrange for overseas people who study the Chinese language to travel in China.

"It's an important part of Ctrip's systematic inbound tourism market arrangement, and we hope bilateral cooperation will attract more visitors," Zhu says.

To date, the Confucius Institute subsidiary has served 6 million Chinese language test participants and 100 million Chinese language learners, while Ctrip has 25 million foreign users.

"This is our first program with Ctrip, and we have more than 1,000 test centers overseas. We may use these facilities to cooperate with many companies," says Zhang Yuan, vice-general manager at the Chinese Testing International Company.