CHENGDU, China, Dec. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report by GoChengdu:

The 2022 China-Japan Youth Educational Tourism Seminar was successfully held in Chengdu on December 16. Under the guidance of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China, this activity is jointly sponsored by the Bureau of International Exchange and Cooperation of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Department of Culture and Tourism of Sichuan Province, and the Chengdu Municipal People's Government, and organized by the Chengdu Municipal Bureau of Culture, Broadcast-TV and Tourism.

Experts from China and Japan carried out a discussion online

Present at the seminar were specialists and guests from both sides including Itaru Shimura, president of the Japan Travel Association, Yu Yougen, deputy secretary-general of China Education International Exchange Association, Takeuchi, president of Japan Educational Tourism Association, Shintaro Taguchi, chief representative of Beijing Representative Office of Japan National Tourism Administration, Guo Meixia, director of the Publicity and Education Department of the Palace Museum, Yoshinori Ochiof, professor of the School of Tourism of Toyo University in Japan as well as other experts and scholars studying in the field of educational tourism between China and Japan. They had a heated discussion and exchanged views on the current situation and development direction of educational tourism for Chinese and Japanese teenagers.

China has an old saying of "it is better to travel ten thousand miles than to read ten thousand books."  In 2013, the General Office of the State Council issued the Outline of National Tourism and Leisure (2013-2020), which first proposed "educational tourism", in which the idea of "gradually promoting study tours for elementary and secondary school students" was proposed. The development of educational tourism for Chinese and Japanese teenagers is a systematic and long-term program. Experts, leaders and guests at the conference agreed that both sides should actively give full play to the urban resources and advantages of the "Culture City of East Asia", explore and design representative China-Japan, China-Japan-South Korea study tour routes and products, and promote multilateral exchanges and cooperation.

It is worth mentioning that Shintaro Taguchi revealed at the conference that the Chengdu Office of Japan National Tourist Organization was officially approved by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China to open in the near future, which is also the fourth agency of this organization in China.

Jointly open up a new path for Chinese-Japanese youth exchanges

Chengdu, the first "City of Gastronomy" in Asia awarded by UNESCO, was rated as one of the "World's Best Tourist Destinations" by National Geographic of the United States. In addition to that, it also boasts the titles of "China's Best Tourist City", "National Cultural Export Base", "the first batch of national cultural and tourism consumption demonstration cities", etc. Recently, Chengdu has also been approved as a park city demonstration area to implement the new development philosophy, and elected as China's "2023 Cultural City of East Asia".

Next, starting from the China-Japan Youth Educational Tourism Seminar, Chengdu will work hand in hand with experts from cultural and tourism circles of the two countries to focus on building a world-famous cultural city as well as the "Cultural City of East Asia", and jointly carry out broader, deeper and more pragmatic exchanges and cooperation between two sides.

"We hope to jointly open up a path for Chinese and Japanese youth to know better about each other, and promote a more stable and far-reaching relation between China and Japan." said an officer in charge of the Chengdu Municipal Bureau of Culture, Broadcast-TV, Television and Tourism. He also claimed that he sincerely hoped more Chinese and Japanese young students could come to Chengdu for sightseeing and leisure travel. They can stroll down the streets of Chengdu, seeing the beautiful sights of this park city under the snow mountain and feeling the happiness of Chengdu people.