According to the survey, the total tourists visit between China and Russia reached 3.35 million in 2011, among which 2.5363 Russian visited China, making it the third market generating country of China. Some of the foreign students who study Mandarin Chinese in China may be told that the Deputy Director of China National Tourism Administration Zhu Shanzhong and the Deputy Director of the Tourism Department of the Russian Federation Sali Shiweili jointly announced that China’s Russia Tourism Year started officially.

According to Zhu Shanzhong’s introduction, for the purpose of implementing chairman Hu Jintao and president Medvedev’s consensus about tourism year in each country, China and Russia agreed to hold Russia Tourism Year in China in the year of 2012 and the Chinese Tourism Year will be held in 2013. In this way, both countries will get better exchange and cooperation and understanding to each other.

At present, China has set up the Chinese organizing Committee, in which the chairman is Wang Qishan, the Chinese vice Premier. And the member includes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance as well as the heads of 11 provinces and cities like Beijing and Shanghai. A piece of news comes from those who study Mandarin online that the chairman of Russian Organizing Committee Surkov, the vice premier of Russia will lead the delegation to attend the opening ceremony, what’s more, attend to the tourism forum between China and Russia.

Sali Shiweili said that Russia “Chinese Tourism Year” and China’s “Russia Tourism Year” between each other is the continuation of the “Language Year”. Through the exchanges of such way, the general public of both nations will get the real opportunity to have a better understanding to each other and understand the neighbors more, more importantly, to understand the history, culture, language, architecture and natural environment, thus seeing the real China and Russia. Russia is looking forward more Chinese people travel to Russia through organizing the tourism year.

Sali Shiweili recommended Chinese tourists focus on the areas such as North Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, Altai and the Far East except for the famous Moscow and St Petersburg. Some foreign students who come to study in China say that Russia could provide Chinese tourists diverse choices such as the vacation travel, the business travel, adventure travel, green travel, travel on river and sea as well as rural travel.