Gianmarco Volpe: Invite more European tourists to visit Yunnan

“I think the most important quality that a journalist should obtain has always been curiosity,” Gianmarco Volpe said frankly in Kunming.

Coming from Italy, Gianmarco Volpe is now the global desk chief of Agenzia Nova, an Italian press agency headquartered in Rome. Before his very first trip to China in 2023, he tried the best to know as much about this country as he could via different means, such as reading books, watching TV news, or simply searching information on the Internet.  This, on the one hand, was associated with his work habit as a professional journalist. His great interest in China also played a key part on the other hand.

Prior to the trip, he learned that Yunnan is a very special province primarily characterized by its spring-like climate all year round, awe-inspiring natural wonders, as well as unique status in global biodiversity conservation. The blooming flowers across Kunming city not only impressed him, but reminded him of San Remo in northwest Italy. “As a tranquil resort town on the Mediterranean coast, San Remo has long been a top tourist destination in Europe where people can enjoy sunshine and a great variety of beautiful flowers throughout the year,” Gianmarco Volpe explained.

In his view, Yunnan’s uniqueness also stems from its distinctive geographic settings, as the province neighbors multiple Southeast Asian countries, and has long played as China’s pivot facing South and Southeast Asia. The China-Laos Railway was put into full operation in the end of 2021. As a transnational mega project of transportation, it has not merely injected new momentum into the economic development of both China and Laos, but helped strengthen the regional and even global connectivities as a whole. “In order to let more people in Europe know about how significant the China-Laos Railway is to international connectivity, cooperation and friendship, we wrote a special report to our readers in Italy right after the railway was opened,” he recalled.

Gianmarco Volpe said that Both Yunnan and Italy possess abundant tourism resources and well-developed tourism industry. However, unlike some other places in China such as Beijing, Shanghai and China, Yunnan still remains unfamiliar to the majority of travelers and tourists from Europe. “And here comes my job,” he emphasized. “As a journalist following international news on a day-to-day basis, I feel that I have a special responsibility to help build bridges between different cultures, so that people from different parts of the globe can understand each other better.”

In the near future, he looks forward to introducing the natural and cultural beauties of Yunnan to more European readers and audiences through news reports, documentaries and various other means, and bringing more tourists to this land that its name has been elegantly translated into “South of the Clouds”.

Reporting and trans-editing by Wang Jingzhong and Liu Ziyu (Yunnan Gateway)