VISA-FREE ATTRACTS CHINESE TOURISTS TO LAKE BAIKAL|中客愛遊貝加爾湖 拖行李渡冰湖蔚為奇觀

The number of Chinese tourists visiting Russia has seen a steady increase in recent years. Lake Baikal has become one of the main attractions. However, it's very hard to get there. Sometimes the tourists have to queue for hours for the hovercraft. Many decide to walk across the ice instead, pulling their luggage and taking photos of the beautiful scenery on the way. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Russia's Lake Baikal have doubled every year. Olkhon, called "the jewel of Siberia", is the largest island in Baikal and is one of the most popular destinations, but one that's very hard to get to. This winter a hovercraft used to shuttle tourists from the mainland to the island and back could not cope with the flow of mainly Chinese visitors, who had to queue for hours to cover two kilometers distance across the ice. Many decide to walk instead, pulling their luggage and taking photos of the beautiful scenery on the way. In the past only fishermen filled local hotels in winter, but lately they've been fully booked by tourists from China. Some hotels have had to adjust their traditional Russian menu following requests from their Chinese guests. ==KARINA MAYOR, hotel administrator== Tourists from China like rice very much. And it is very interesting that usually we cook rice porridge with milk for a typical Russian breakfast, you know, with pancakes etc. But they ask us to use water for cooking rice porridge. Just rice boiled in water. At first, it was something new for us, but that's fine. We don't like it very much, but we have to cook that for them. But in general, they eat everything that we eat. They like fish, meat, dumplings very much. Hotels and hostels have been expanding on Olkhon, especially in the face of competition from Chinese investors. Several tourism companies from China had already bought large plots of land on the island and built hotels and tourist camps. According to the Russian tourism ministry in 2016, the number of Chinese tourists who visited Irkutsk region was 43,500 people, which is a 158 percent increase on the previous year. ==HANG ZHU, Chinese tourist== Because I would read on the internet that someone said that Baikal Lake is very marvelous, beautiful and I also very like to watch the animals in forests. In the year 2000, Russia and China signed an agreement on visa-free travel for tourist groups from both countries, which helped to boost the number of visitors. The regional capital Irkutsk, situated about 70 kilometers from Baikal, has also benefited from the growing number of Chinese tourists, as most of them fly to Irkutsk. Chinese restaurants have become a common site in this old Siberian city. TRANSLATED BY：JESSICA OY