The UK seems to be the hot destination for Chinese tourists as of late.
First it was camera-toting Chinese tourists baffling the British with their love of one Oxfordshire village’s quiet streets and idyllic cottages. Now it’s a Chinese firm buying a Buckinghamshire pub visited by President Xi Jinping last year.
The pub, called the Plough at Cadsden, became a symbol of the ‘Golden Age’ between China and Great Britain of 2015, when Xi met there with then-Prime Minister David Cameron. Following the visit, Cameron flirted with a UK-China romance, enthusiastically supporting investment from Beijing.
New Prime Minister Theresa May seems a little more wary of Chinese money, but in the end she went ahead and approved the Hinkley Point Nuclear Project anyway. (In the need of some non-EU friends post-Brexit?)
Still, SinoFortone Investment, a government-backed investment group, seems confident that the purchase of the pub will prolong the Golden Age. Chinese tourists are already flocking to the pub, which served its first ale during the Ming Dynasty.
“The English pub concept is growing very fast in China and it’s the best way culturally to link people from different countries and build friendships,” said managing director of the firm Peter Zhang.
Oddly enough, British tourists don’t seem nearly as interested in Jianguo 328, a Shanghainese restaurant visited by Cameron on his state visit to China in 2013.
[Photos via The Guardian, BBC and Daily Mail]
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