UK to rename landmarks for Chinese tourists

Britain's tourism authorities are renaming some of the country's key landmarks to make them more attractive to lucrative Chinese tourists.
In China it is popular to give names to favourite celebrities, places and foods that describe what people think of them.
As part of the new campaign by VisitBritain, Stonehenge will translate as "Huge Stone Clusters" in Mandarin, Europe's tallest Building - The Shard - as "A Tower Allowing Us To Pluck Stars From The Sky" and Brighton's famous Royal Pavilion will be "John's Indian Palace".
"Chinese visitors already stay longer in Britain than in our European competitor destinations and are high spenders," said VisitBritain chief executive Sally Balcombe.

"Every 22 additional Chinese visitors we attract supports an additional job in tourism. We want to ensure that we continue to compete effectively in this, the world's biggest outbound market and ensure that we deliver growth and jobs across the nations and regions of Britain," she said.
British place names cannot easily be translated into Mandarin, so VisitBritain invited Chinese people to come up with their own alternative names that are more descriptive and understandable.

The Big Ben will be known to the Chinese as "Da Ben Zhong", London Eye as "Lun Dun Yan" and Buckingham Palace as "Bai Jin Han Gong" which translates as "white, gold and splendid palace".

VisitBritain, the UK's nationwide tourism agency, believes that creating Mandarin names for Britain's famous sites will promote engagement between the British and Chinese populations and encourage more people in China to choose Britain as a holiday destination.
As part of its 'GREAT names for GREAT Britain' campaign, which has been carried out on social media over the past couple of months, the agency invited Chinese consumers to come up with the best names for 101 of Britain's most loved attractions, as well as a range of lesser-known places around the country.
People make their suggestions through a micro-site and on social media, with the aim of getting them to travel to Britain and take photos of themselves experiencing some of the renamed landmarks.

The first batch of names released included Pi Tou Shi, which translates into "the gentlemen with long hair", referring to the Beatles, and Xiao Huang Gua, which translates as "the pickled little cucumber", a reference to the Gherkin building in London.
The marketing push was announced in December 2014 as figures that showed a record number of tourists visited Britain in 2014.
Nearly 20 million people visited the UK between January and July last year, a rise of 7 per cent on the previous year and a new record - and they spent 11.3 billion pounds.