Dungeons and Dragons

Dear reader,

The Wood Dragon Year has started in China and everybody hopefully had a good time with family, friends, food and a lot of travelling. Some have used the relaxed atmosphere for surprising musings.

A lot of nonsense has been published about all the positive influences of the Dragon in the coming year, disregarding not only the negative sides of power abuse connected to it, but more importantly the fact that without the element, in this year wood, fortune telling is disconnected from any Chinese tradition anyway. Chinese New Year celebrations are as far away from tradition and religious background as Christmas celebrations are in the Western world.

A remarkable article in the China Daily Global Edition by an associate professor of psychology at Southwest University of Science and Technology and a PhD candidate at Tongji University even discusses “New Year phobia”. The authors propose that the “contemporary society should be more open and inclusive, both preserving traditional customs and celebrations and using innovative ways to celebrate Spring Festival. While thousands of years of traditions should be preserved, it's not necessary to rigidly adhere to every custom. While upholding cultural confidence, it's crucial to welcome fresh ideas from the younger generation, and respect their new approach.” Are they really talking just about Spring Festival? Honi soit qui mal y pense!

The number of Chinese travelling outbound during the New Year Golden Week has been eagerly anticipated. Official Chinese and careless copy-and-paste Western media report “soaring numbers” and “records broken”. Domestic, inbound and outbound results were all mixed together and only by looking carefully the official number of the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism could be found: 3.6 million outbound tourist departures during the holiday period. Compared to the 2019 official result of 6.3 million trips this is still less than 60% of the pre-pandemic level. Certainly more than the 44% of 2023, however not yet close to 100% recovery. More numbers and discussions of the results of Chinese New Year travel in 2024 can be found in the Facts&Views section of this weeks COTRI INTELLIGENCE.

The Deep Dive chapter in COTRI INTELLIGENCE this week looks at the rather underwhelming results of eight years of SDGs in the Asia-Pacific region. 

This week COTRI INTELLIGENCE is starting with a new form for the Topic of the Week. We are providing our readers with a video preview of the new CTT China Tourism Training sessions. Each week a peek into one of the more than 60 sessions will be given, starting unsurprisingly with No. 1 this week. The training programs are covering all kind of important topics, each within 20 minutes. More information can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0CDpdhi-e0&list=PLhJPQtVqcECcc6p6uWD4im1qUKA4QtR64 

CTT is available in more than 30 languages thanks to the help of AI.

Please make use of a Premium or Premium Plus subscription to be able to access all parts of COTRI INTTELLIGENCE. Celebrating the Year of the Wood Dragon, we have prolonged our special one month welcoming subscription, with a 59% discount.

Look here: https://cotri-intelligence.ghost.io/welcoming-offer.

Again, all best wishes to our readers from Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Georg Arlt and the entire COTRI INTELLIGENCE team for the New Year!