Written by Ming Zi /Photographed by Xu Jiechen

The 2010 World Expo will be held in Shanghai, which will generate invaluable opportunity for the rapid development of the tourism sector in Shanghai and for the whole Yangtze Rive Delta. The Shanghai Tourism Commission and the Traffic and Patrol Division of the Shanghai Public Safety Bureau have made tremendous progress in the standardization of traffic guidance signposts for sceneries in the Yangtze Rive Delta. The program, a key project for the tourism sector in Shanghai this year, was initiated in line with the requirements made by the fifth urban economic coordination conference for cities in the Yangtze River Delta, which was held on November 2, 2004.

Technical rules for the installation of traffic guidance signposts for sceneries in the Yangtze River Delta have been drafted in a bid to foster the development of a healthy, leisure, and individualized tourism market in this region for Chinese and overseas travelers driving their own cars. The rules, if released, will be the first standardized regional stipulations in the Yangtze River Delta.

Sources with the Traffic and Patrol Division of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau said that one of the most innovative articles of the rules is the classification of the sceneries into A, B and C categories according to resources of the tourism sites, market value of the sceneries and other relevant criteria.

According to the rules, a total of seven sets of scenery signposts were designed in line with the features of major sceneries in the Yangtze River Delta. These signposts are for the categories of temples, science and technology museums, Golf clubs, and ancient towns in Southern China, mountains and rivers, Nongjiale (a newly-developed tourist package idea involving living in farm houses and eating farm food,) as well as ecological wetlands. The rules stipulated that all the sceneries that can be classified into these seven categories in the Yangtze River Delta should adopt the corresponding signposts in the traffic guidance maps. For those unique sceneries such as the Oriental Pearl TV Tower in Shanghai, the Tiger Knoll in Suzhou and the West Lake of Hanzhou, they are allowed to adopt personalized signposts to showcase their unique features while taking into account the uniform requirements set by the rules.

The drafters are also quite concerned with the‘people-first’philosophy, and a case in point is the combination of parking lot signposts with the scenery signposts. The rules said that the last scenery signpost for travelers arriving at the tourism sites should indicate where the parking lot is in order to help travelers driving their own cars to park their cars and to improve the traffic conditions for areas surrounding the sceneries.

Pictures in this story:

1. Seven categories of scenery signposts: temples, science and technology museums, Golf clubs, ancient towns in Southern China, mountains and rivers, Nongjiale and ecological wetlands.

2. Signposts integrating indications of parking lots and sceneries.

3. Double-column signposts will be installed at places where guidance is needed for several tourism sites.

4. An instance of the scenery guidance signpost.