Road trip to Russia to promote red tourism

About 1,000 Chinese are about to start a three-month road trip to Russia, the China National Tourism Administration said on Tuesday.

The event will begin in Hunan and Shaanxi provinces on June 28, with people from the two areas driving to Beijing for an opening ceremony on July 1.

Participants will then drive to Manzhouli, a city in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region that borders Russia. They will enter Russia on July 5 and attend a launch ceremony in Moscow.

After the ceremony, participants will be divided into three groups and take road trips along three different routes: Moscow to Ulyanovsk, a city about 900 kilometers east of the capital; Moscow to Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia; and Moscow to St. Petersburg.

During their trips, participants will visit a series of red tourism destinations, including the former residence and the tomb of Vladimir Lenin, a Russian communist revolutionary and politician, and a building near suburban Moscow where the sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in 1928, which is now a museum.

Xue Yaping, a senior official with the administration, said the event has been organized to boost exchanges and cooperation between China and Russia on red tourism, while deepening ties between people in the two countries.

Tourism authorities and associations in Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Hunan and Shaanxi, as well as travel agencies and car rental companies in Beijing, are supporting the event, Xue said.