FACES OF THE “NEW CHINA”: A COMPARISON OF TOURISTIC WEB SITES IN THE CHINESE AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES

For some nations, such as the People's Republic of China, international tourism has become not just what some claim is the largest extant industry, but also a vital part of promoting the nation as a full participant in the modern world. Increasingly, one of the paths to greater promotion of a culture is through tourism, and one of the principal ways this is done is via the Internet. To explore the issues relating to World Wide Web pages/sites on which touristic attractions are promoted, a detailed analysis was conducted of material on two Web sites for the PRC coastal city of Dalian, one in Chinese and the other in English. It is shown that the principles of effective site design seem to be violated on the Chinese site but not on the English site. Yet the effect of the two sites is opposite of what might be predicted: the Chinese site is dynamic, open, and interesting, whereas the English site is static, entropic, and dull. Implications concerning ethnocentrism in “acceptable” site design are introduced and explored, as are implications for improving the communication of touristic information via the Internet.