In the middle of the 13th century, Italian Marco Polo was one of the few international tourists to visit China - or anywhere else.

Nowadays, it's common to find Chinese tourists wondering around the Colosseum in ancient Rome or Italians climbing the Great Wall.

In Beijing, Athens, Rome, Cairo, and Jerusalem, the thriving tourism industry has shortened the distances of the world, and thus built new bridges for the Chinese civilization to exchange and blend with others.

More than 42 million overseas travelers visited China in the first half of this year, spending nearly US$8.5 billion, according to Xinhua news agency.

"Like the Yellow River, the Nile was also a cradle of prehistoric civilization," said Hamed Sakr, an official at the Egyptian Embassy in China. "Not long ago, China and Egypt signed a tourism cooperation protocol to encourage mutual understanding and friend-ship by means of tourism. We are confident about the results."

Chen Tai, a researcher just back from Cairo, said, "Neither the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty nor the Egyptian emperors would know that the Terra-cotta Warriors and the Pyramid have become magnets between two ancient civilizations."

The Sino-Egyptian cooperation in trade and agriculture has also been greatly enhanced along with the boom in tourism.

The volume of bilateral trade between the two countries reached US$907 million last year.

Chinese investment in Egypt totaled US$30 million, 40 percent more than the same period last year.

Israel also has become an important cultural exchange partner will China.

"The personnel exchanges between China and Israel have been growing remarkably in recent years. More than 20,000 Chinese have been there to work, study, travel and do business," said Amir Sagie, an official with the Embassy of Israel in China.

Not only the cultivation of several thousand years of history but also the cooperation in modern science and technology have connected China's mainland with Israel.

More than 3,000 Chinese flew from Beijing to Tel Aviv on Israel Airlines in the first half of this year.

(Eastday.com.cn 08/14/2001)