As pandemic measures persist, vacationing locally remains a main option for holiday

“Tailor-made trips", “staycation” and “cultural tours” have become the buzzwords describing the domestic tourism market during the recent National Day holiday, which ran from Oct 1 through Friday.

On an online platform for travel customization, a user can book a     1     itinerary with a click of a button after providing information such as place of departure, destination, travel dates and number of travelers, Xinhua News Agency reported.

“The tour customization specialist who received my order     2     a travel plan for me according to my specifications in terms of food, accommodation, transport and recreational activities,” a tourist from the eastern city of Qingdao told Xinhua. “A dedicated driver and guide were assigned to us, and any details could be     3     at my request.”

Dai Xuefeng, director of the division for tourism and leisure at the National Academy of Economic Strategy from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Xinhua: “Bespoke holidays are an inevitable result of the development of the tourism industry and of economic growth.”

Vacationing     4     remains a main option as COVID-19 precautions continue. In the week leading up to the holiday, on-demand services platform Meituan saw searches for “local tours” and “suburban attractions” surge by 440 percent week-on-week.

Suburban attractions in Beijing, such as Universal Beijing Resort and Beijing Wtown, were among the popular choices for local residents, Xinhua reported.

In the Central China province of Hubei, rural tours, fruit and vegetable picking experiences, and camping trips emerged as the top options. They were expected to take in more than 60 percent of the province’s tourist spending during the holiday week, according to Xinhua.

Zhou Qiao, a resident of Hubei’s Yichang city who vacationed at the local Bailihuang scenic area during the holiday, told Xinhua: “We booked tents in advance and took our family here to experience the wonder of watching the sunrise in the morning and counting the stars in the evening. My children loved the experience very much.”

The wide     5     of cultural events and destinations in cities drew huge numbers of urban residents during the holiday week.

Historical architectural     6     Sanfang Qixiang, which     7     means “three lanes and seven alleys”, in Fuzhou, East China’s Fujian province, entertained tourists with     8     cultural heritage-themed talent shows and Yueju Opera performances, among others.

In Shanghai, many museums     9     exhibitions, cultural activities, as well as night tours to add a(n)     10     of culture to the holiday fun, said China Central Television.

Li Xinjian, a professor at Beijing International Studies University’s School of Tourism Sciences, told Xinhua that the integration of culture and tourism highlights the cultural experiences in tourist trips, and tailor-made tours offer in-depth cultural experiences that large group tours are unable to provide.

Venice—The Risk of the Disappearance of an Entire City

Venice is a stunning oddity. It is a city built atop around 120 islands, crisscrossed by 177 canals, and is best explored via the use of its 391 bridges. But the city is not well recently. Indeed,     1     drastic measures are taken, the city’s days could be numbered.

This is far from hyperbole(夸张): Venice is at very real risk of     2     (consume) by the sea. In worst-case scenario, the city could disappear beneath the waves by 2100. Meanwhile, many of its building are sinking     3     being damaged by the wakes of boats. It is also routinely overwhelmed by tourists, while its local population is in continual decline.

Globally, a lot of cities    4     (hit) by similar problems of sinking land and rising sea levels in Venice. Low-lying Jakarta(雅加达), for example, is in such a terrible situation that it is being replaced     5     the capital city of Indonesia by Nusantara, a city not yet even built.

In November 2019, Venice suffered its second-worst flooding. It created headlines around the world, with onlookers     6     (astonish) by the incredible images of Saint Mark’s Square, one of the city’s lowest lying areas, covered in feet of water.

The tide reached a peak height of 187cm above sea level,     7     (result) in more than 80% of the city being under water. A state of emergency was declared, and there was an estimated €1bn euros worth of damage.

The worst ever flooding event, which happened in 1966,     8     (see) water levels rise to 194cm above sea level, and is thought     9     (damage) at least three quarters of the city’s shops, businesses and studios.

    10     a gap of over 50 years separated these events, recent trends suggest that we won’t have to wait half a century to see another disastrous flood. Since water levels started being officially recorded in 1923, they have reached 150cm or more on only 10 occasions, but five of those have been in the last three years.

6 . We Have a Painter to Thank for Yellowstone

Before artist Thomas Moran set foot in the park, it was seen as a hellish place. After, it was marketed as a wonderland.

Before Thomas Moran arrived, Yellowstone in the popular imagination was a harsh, wild place pocked with hellish geysers(间歇泉). After the painter’s work was finished, Yellowstone was established as a national park and marketed as a wonderland.

In 1871 Moran and photographer William Henry Jackson had joined the first U.S. government survey of the region. For two weeks Moran filled a sketchbook with the landscape’s most stunning sights. The survey results, Jackson’s photos, and Moran’s watercolors—the first color illustration of the area—were presented to Congress that fall. “The photographs were proof that what the artist was showing really existed,” says Eleanor Harvey, senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In March 1872 lawmakers officially made Yellowstone a national park, the world’s first. By April, Moran had transformed some of his sketches into a 7-by-12-foot painting. The gold-splattered valley and billowing Lower Falls of “The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” fascinated the public. “It is too grand and wonderful for words,” declared the Ladies’ Repository that August, “and none can ever be a judge of its wonders from any engraving or photograph in mere black and white.”

Though Moran later painted Lake Superior, the Grand Canyon, and the Rockies, his reputation was so attached to Yellowstone that he took to signing his paintings “TYM”.

The shimmering torus-shaped museum of the future in Dubai is covered in Arabic calligraphy and is supported by a steel diagrid(构架), with a facade(建筑物正面) of 1,024 steel panels. The aviation industry provided inspiration for the technology needed to create the exterior that was developed using learning algorithms.

“All the parameters(参数)     1     (put) into a program structurally, and eventually it learned to create this shape,” says architect Shaun Killa.

    2     (open) in February 2022, the building is an iconic addition to Dubai’s already dramatic skyline, which includes the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab and the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. These modern, globally recognizable structures have made a name for Dubai’s architecture, but the story of Dubai’s urban views     3     (go) back to the 2000s. “Often the story is that since the 2000s it’s been a place of gleaming skyscrapers,” says architect and writer Todd Reisz, author of Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai. But the creative fusion seen in the architecture of structures like Killa’s Museum of the Future goes deeper.

“I think what     4     (have) the most influence on the city up to the present is the fact that it’s an entrepot, a port city,” says Reisz. “I’s a place of exchange and in-betweenness, where not only things and people come in and out, but so do ideas.” That exchange of ideas has led to some of the world’s most ambitious architectural projects—    5     Killa has played an outsize role.

Killa first arrived in Dubai from South Africa in 1998,     6     (join) architecture firm Atkins, where he worked on the Burj AI Arab—one of Dubai’s most famous buildings, which sits on an artificial island and is shaped like the sail of a yacht. “For an architect coming from Cape Town, the scale of the buildings was so much     7     (big),” Killa says of Dubai. “If you’re used to smaller projects, it’s quite a challenge to overcome that scale.” Killa went on     8     (work) on other major projects in Dubai such as the Dubai Opera, the Address Boulevard, and the Almas Tower, the tallest building in Dubai at the time.

With its unusual facade, the Museum of the Future, located in Dubai’s financial district features frequently on Instagram posts. And like the city     9    , it has become a place of exchange—an outsize space where people gather, marvel, and commune. “That enjoyment that I saw people having really filled me with something     10     was very special,” Killa says of the public reception to the museum. “The building has now been passed to them.”

9 . At Cleveland Bridge, in Bath, a long line of traffic is building up. Although the Georgian structure was praised for its handsome Greek Revival style by Nikolaus Pevsner, an architectural master, it was built for horses, not cars. Repairs will close the bridge for several months, causing bigger jams and more pollution in a city where air quality is already a cause of concern.

Bath is an extreme example of a tradeoff faced by much of the country. Britain has the oldest housing stock in Europe, with one in five homes more than 100 years old. Period features are prized and often protected by law. Yet as efforts to cut carbon emissions intensify, they are clashing with attempts to preserve heritage. It is a “delicate balance” says Wera Hobhouse, Bath’s MP “What is the public benefit of dealing with the climate emergency, versus protecting a heritage asset?”

Two years ago, Bath was among the first British cities to declare a “climate emergency” when it also promised to go carbon-neutral by 2030. Yet Bath also wants-and is legally required to preserve its heritage. With Roman remains and Georgian streets that spread across the Avon Valley in shades of honey and butter, the city is designated a world heritage site by UNESCO. About 60% of it is further protected by the government as a conservation area, more than 5.000 of Bath’s buildings-nearly 10% of the total-are listed as being of special architectural or historical interest, making it a criminal offence to alter them without permission.

Many of the features that make Bath’s Georgian buildings so delicate also make them leaky. Buildings of traditional construction make up 30% of Bath’s housing stock but account for 40% of domestic carbon emissions, according to the Centre for Sustainable Energy, a charity. British homes are rated for energy efficiency on a scale from A to G; most traditional buildings in the city are an F or G.

Transport is another area where climate and heritage clash. Bath’s 17t-century streets lack room for bike lanes. Joanna Wright was recently booted out of her role as Bath’s climate chief after proposing that North Road, which leads to the university, should be closed to traffic. In two years she was unable to install any on-street electric-vehicle charging points, partly because of the “nightmare" of getting permission to dig up old pavements.

All this means going carbon neutral by 2030 looks hard, but the city is at least beginning to make compromises. In March it launched the first “clean-air zone” outside London, charging drivers to enter central Bath. A trial has made 160 electric motoreycles available to hire. And local opinion seems to be shifting in favour of sustainability. “The discussion has moved dramatically towards considering the climate emergency,” says Ms. Hobhouse.

How the Victorians Invented the “ Staycation ”

Holidays feel like an important refreshment after such a tough year. While international travel is possible, it’s not exactly easy, so many are choosing to stay closer to home, taking a “staycation ”. This year holidaymakers are discovering the     1     of the UK’s coast and the beauty of its landscapes.

Domestic tourism as we know it began in the 19th century when the idea of the holiday was just becoming     2     . Expanding railways and changing work practices meant people had more leisure time for travelling. International travel was becoming easier but wasn’t     3     to all, so the Victorians chose to spend this newfound “ free ” time in the UK.

This gave way to the     4     of hot new holiday destinations, mostly on the UK’s coast. Great British seaside towns, from Bournemouth to Brighton, appealed to people with     5     of fun, sea and clean air — many of the things that continue to attract people today.

The great summer holiday as we know it was designed by the Victorians. The 19th century saw the industrial     6     and the rise of industrial capitalism, where factories were booming and work structures were more clearly and severely defined and presented. This led to the emergence of administrative     7     , like clerks, and an emerging middle class.

There was more     8     working time, including shift work in factories and time off on Sundays. As a result, working-class people had leisure time to use, and by the 1890s some skilled workers had half days on Saturdays, leading to the birth of the “ weekend ” — though this was not     9     until much later in the 20th century.

In 1871 the Bank Holidays Act was passed. This appointed certain days as holidays on which banks closed, though, over the years, more businesses began observing these days off work. Before 1830, banks closed only on the 40 saints’ days of the year, though by 1834 this was just four days, including Christmas day. From 1871, any day could be     10     a bank holiday, not just saints’ days.