Suddenly, many are following in Marco Polo’s footsteps

Every year, the World Tourism Organization issues a list of the top 10 destinations. Every year for as long as I can recall, France, Spain, the U.S. and Italy have been at the top. But when I saw the Madrid-based organization’s list for 2004, I was so startled that I slammed down my mug and sloshed coffee all over the desk: China, not Italy, was in the No. 4 spot.

When it comes to rate of tourism growth, China is No. 1, attracting 27% more foreign visitors last year than in 2003, according to the organization. The Chinese government reported that visitation increased almost 20% in the first three months of this year, compared with last year.

Some say that the dramatic rise is chiefly the result of increased business travel to the emerging economic powerhouse -- whose population is about 1.3 billion -- and that the 2003 figures were unusually low because of the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which killed 774 people in 2002 and 2003 but has since subsided.

Among American travelers, China is the 15th most popular destination, according to the U.S. Office of Travel & Tourism Industries.

I was surprised enough by the results to call Louanne Kalvinskas at Distant Lands, a travel store in Pasadena, for anecdotal confirmation.

“Our China section is decimated,” she said.

Pamela Lassers, a spokeswoman for Abercrombie & Kent, which specializes in luxury travel to exotic places, said the agency had seen a 48% increase in China travel this year over last year, part of the reason the company opened an office in Beijing in April.

Laudie Hanou, vice president of the tours division of Encino-based SITA World Travel, a longtime leader in economical group tours to China, reported that the agency had added departures to that country for the fall and winter.

Karin Hansen, a China specialist at Frosch Travel Duet, which has its headquarters in Houston, said: “Clients looking for something a little out of the loop, but safe, are turning to China instead of India or Africa.”

China Southern, that country’s largest airline, with a fleet that includes three new Airbus A330s, carried 52% more international passengers in 2004 than in 2003.

And Kuala Lumpur-based AirAsia, a budget carrier, is adding six southern China cities this year.

All this means one thing to me: It’s time to visit China, or in my case, make a return visit. I spent a month there in 1996 and two weeks in Hong Kong in 1998.

The 1996 trip was memorable but tough because I traveled on my own instead of taking a tour at a time when independent travel was fairly uncommon. Getting train and airline tickets was a complicated and mysterious process, managed only by government tourist agents. Even at big, Western-style hotels, it was hard to find English speakers. And there were no tourist information centers to help independent travelers find attractions and accommodations.

Things, however, have changed significantly in the last decade.

“There have been major improvements in tourism infrastructure ... more reliable domestic airline service with new equipment and a choice of international luxury hotels,” said Lassers of Abercrombie & Kent, which started mounting trips to China shortly after the country opened to travelers in the ‘80s.

So what was once virtually a destination only for tour groups is now increasingly user-friendly for independent travelers, especially if they book hotels and transportation through a U.S. travel agent who has knowledge of and contacts in China.

Xinhong Zhang, director of the China National Tourist Office for the Los Angeles area, cited Beijing, Shanghai and booming Guangdong province in the south as the most popular destinations in her country.

But now, travelers are venturing farther afield. China travel agent Hansen suggests visiting the canal villages of Dongshan and Tongli, near Suzhou; Dali in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, with its ethnic population and easy ambience; and the Buddhist cave art and monasteries near Datong.

To that itinerary I would add a few of the places I saw and never forgot:

Beijing: No one, I think, should visit this city without experiencing a pedicab tour of the northern lake district, which starts on the northern side of Beihai Park and takes travelers through the old-fashioned alleyways of the city.

Nanjing: This lovely city west of Shanghai is easy for tourists to handle, with its wide European-style boulevards, lined by plane trees. Top sights there are the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in the hills east of the city, a bridge over the Yangtze River completed in 1968 and the Taiping Museum, commemorating a failed Christian rebellion against the Qing Dynasty in the 1850s.

Dazu: This place, half a day’s drive west of the Yangtze River hub of Chongqing, has extraordinary Buddhist cliff carvings dating from about AD 1000, depicting scenes as diverse as the many-fingered goddess of mercy and the trials and tribulations of ordinary Chinese mothers.

Chongqing: Above all, I’m fascinated by this city, on an island at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. Its striking setting reminds me of Manhattan, but its details are all Chinese, skyscrapers cheek by jowl with shabby, single-story dumpling restaurants.

I could continue, but I’m a little distracted planning my next trip to China: Tibet, the Silk Road, Mongolia. Every place that Marco Polo went, but easier.

Susan Spano also writes “Postcards From Paris,” which can be read at latimes.com/susanspano.