Extension

Ex. 44. Express your view on the text and relate it to your own experiences. Write a summery of it.

Tourism used to be something that well-heeled northern Europeans and North Americans did to other people. They put on brightly coloured clothes and wondered around the world as if it were a zoo, scattering the local currency that they did not need to bother to understand because buy so much with their dollars and pounds, confident that they were watching a spectacle mounted entirely for their benefits.

Then their less affluent compatriots joined in, turning much of the coastline of Spain, Greece and Turkey into a convincing replica of the high-rise estates they had left behind.

Tourism is still regarded as a uniquely Western form of cultural imperialism, and therefore to be discouraged. However, its next cultural clash isn’t going to be on the beaches of Asia or Costas, it’s going to be back in Northern Europe, where it all sprang from in the first place.

Last year Britain had 21 million overseas visitors, up from 16 million just five years ago. The Government’s latest figures on tourism, released this week, predict another rise of 10 per cent. The number of visitors are not going to stop growing.

It used to be America that provided Britain with its largest contingent of free-spending overseas visitors. But the biggest jump in high-spending new visitors is from Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea and Japan. With Heathrow now full of jumbos from Korea, and even the most out-of-the-way country tea room eager to accept Japanese credit cards, Britain is having to get used to looking at mass tourism from the other end of the telescope.

Its development that will have far-reaching consequences for the whole of Europe. Seen from the outside, particularly from the now dominant economies of the Pacific Rim, Europe is a puzzling place, full of incomprehensible little countries, each with their own language. Its industries, from shipbuilding to computers are dying, one by one.

Europe’s future role is a theme park the size of an entire continent, attracting millions of newly affluent visitors from the rest of the world to stare at the ancient remains of its city centers from Paris and London to Copenhagen and Amsterdam.

Even before the arrival of the mass-market Asian tourists, the impact of tourism on Britain has already been dramatic. Look at Winsor, where what was once a thriving country town has seen every shop on its high street turned into fast-food outlet catering for castle visitors.

The transformations of Britain by tourism is still only just beginning. Just as the first Britain holiday-makers who ventured to Spain in the 1950s needed constant reassurance to persuade them that abroad was not absolutely terrifying, with supplies of tea bags, beer and chips, so Asian visitors to Britain still come in tightly organized tour groups, rushing around in the packs, following a guide from one familiar landmark to another. The best organized are the Japanese, who published handy guides to reassure their citizens that British taxi drivers will not be offended by a tip. The Japanese have even established a parallel universe in London clustered around Regent Street, where they can find not just the offices of Japanese airlines, but also branches of Tokyo department stores set up especially to cater for the overseas Japanese market. Delivered by bus, the Japanese can pay in yen, and have no need to attempt to speak a word of English, or to worry about making of themselves in front of foreigners.

(Adapted from the Gardian)

UNIT 6

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