The terrible reality of visiting some WHS in China at some times nowadays!

Typical of the Independent to headline the article as "Great Wall of China" and then much of it is about Jiuzhaigou padded out with some movie of the Great Wall!!!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/human-traffic-jam-as-tourists-flock-to-g reat-wall-of-china-8856077.html

A good example of Chinese idiom - mountains of people, sea of people!

I already had to experience that in 2007 at Huangshan - http://www.worldheritagesite.org/sites/mounthuangshan.html

But Jiuzhaigou is pretty remote for such a crowd, though it was set up for that already when I visited (also in 2007).

1 MILLION Visitors in a DAY!!! (Oct. 2nd, 2013)

Hangzhou - West Lake

http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20131005000065&cid=1103

40 Tons of trash clean-up in one day! Unbelievable.

ICOMOS (AB Evaluation)
The West Lake is both robust and vulnerable: it can
absorb comparatively large number of visitors but
beyond a certain point, the needs of the visitors and their
impact on the landscape could impact adversely on the
authenticity of the property, on the quality of their visits,
and on the ability of the landscape to inspire. Visitor
management needs to be given a high priority in relation
to the overall management of the property.

ICOMOS recommends that the State Party give
consideration to the following:

Strengthening visitor management arrangements

"According to reports from Xinhua, the city's best-known tourist attraction welcomed 1,008,000 visitors on Wednesday; "

Lucky those last 8001 visitors turned up and managed to squeeze in. The headline wouldn't have been the same if it had said "Nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine tourists visit Hangzhou's West Lake in single day"!!!! You almost wonder if someone was trying to get an entry in the "Guiness Book of Records" and some of the same people were going round and round to do so! Nice touch to have the extra 8000 but it looks a bit too "neat" - 1008264 would have looked better! But what's a few tens of thousands of people +/- when you are in China! Do they have turnstiles to count people even now entry is free - I don't remember any when we were there back in 1989 (though that could be because entry was just a few fen back then) but I guess they must have introduced them if they started charging.

When looking at the wider question of imposing visitor number limits at WHS around the World I discovered that it is intended to do so at Mogao and, moreover, that a "state of the art" Visitor centre is nearing completion -due to open next year (but already late due it seems to lack of funding which is a surprise).

We visited back in 1996 and already found the "visit experience" rushed and limited ( http://www.worldheritagesite.org/sites/mogaocaves.html ) - numbers must have increased massively since then. No doubt something had to be done.

What is being done is to build the new Visitor Centre near the airport some kms away from the caves. provide Virtual Reality replicas of the caves ... oh and bus people to and from the caves from there! I provide some links below including a PhD thesis (Texas University) by a guy who had worked as a guide at the Caves describing the recent visitor experience, issues arising and the planned new facilities and system - it appears there will be a computer based Visitor management system which will schedule/control the flows and times at each Caves. I rather liked this phrase in his paper "From my understandings about visitors, the purpose of visiting the site is to see the authentic, original caves. Most of the visitors would not be satisfied with a short visitation in the caves and a simple introduction"!! You're so right - but the direction of travel for visitor management around the world seems to be to reduce somewhat the main aspect of a visit to the real thing to a mere episode within a series of controlled activities.

Link to plans for the new visitor centre
http://www.friendsofdunhuang.org/newsletter/article.php?lang=en&id=080103

Links to a recent (May 2012) progress report
http://www.best-news.us/news-4254716-Mogao-Caves-visitor-center-significantly-shape-t he-post-construction-funding-gap-Yuyi.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2013-05/18/content_16509215.htm

Link to the PhD thesis (also contains some good background infor on the history of the site and many of the caves)
http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/ETD-UT-2012-08-6370/DU-THESI S.pdf?sequence=1