China is big enough that foreign tourists are but a blip on the radar, despite frequent and cheap flights (I once flew Singapore-Beijing for SGD 17 return on Air Asia). You're talking about a place where even second rate "countryside" cities have the population of London or Paris.
Venice and other so called "traditional" cities have failed not because of the rush of tourists, but because they have attempted to freeze their prosperity in time. The Venetian Republic once was a world leader in trade, culture and prosperity, and today's historical monuments were yesterday's cutting edge skyscrapers. "Authenticity" merely represents a people's local solutions to the problems of survival and population growth, the cultures that have survived hundreds of years of competition; "foreign" habits are rapidly adapted if they are superior to the local option, which is why you don't see many ox carts left in Bali.
That Straits "kopi", the thick, overroasted, sweetened brew you have with kaya toast? It's like this because extremely poor Chinese immigrants bought low quality beans, the only ones they could afford, and roasted them with butter and sweetened them with sugar to try and mellow the bad taste. Nobody does it anymore as the region grew economically and coffee beans got comparatively cheaper vs, say, labour costs and real estate. In Vietnam, bicycles have been replaced by mopeds. In Mumbai, motorised autorickshaws have completely replaced the people-drawn ones (which I'm told still exist in places like Chennai). Does that make both cities less "authentic"?
Paris is my favorite example of a city that is so stuck in its past it refuses to acknowledge its own philosophy. Haussmann's razing and rebuilding of the entire city had purely modern ambitions: clean up the sewers that most of the badly built streets had become, reduce fire risk, accomodate higher population density, encourage trade via better transport infrastructure, and so on. But Parisians have arbitrarily decided that Hausmannian architecture - which was motivated by practical considerations - is "pretty" and refuse to approve anything that would help make Paris a more modern city (at least outside the Defense, and the Tour Montparnasse), forcing real estate prices through the roof and Parisians to endure hour-long commutes. One side effect is that the city is popular with tourists who can travel in time, of course. But would you rather be a Venetian or a New Yorker?
What makes China (and, to be honest, modern Southeast Asia outside the American party towns like Phuket) so fascinating is that it is rapidly opening to the world and attempting to pull several hundred million people into the middle class by any means possible. This, not the pretty grey hutongs or "characteristic" street meat sticks is what makes it an interesting place to see and do business in. In my humble ang moh opinion.
Venice and other so called "traditional" cities have failed not because of the rush of tourists, but because they have attempted to freeze their prosperity in time. The Venetian Republic once was a world leader in trade, culture and prosperity, and today's historical monuments were yesterday's cutting edge skyscrapers. "Authenticity" merely represents a people's local solutions to the problems of survival and population growth, the cultures that have survived hundreds of years of competition; "foreign" habits are rapidly adapted if they are superior to the local option, which is why you don't see many ox carts left in Bali.
That Straits "kopi", the thick, overroasted, sweetened brew you have with kaya toast? It's like this because extremely poor Chinese immigrants bought low quality beans, the only ones they could afford, and roasted them with butter and sweetened them with sugar to try and mellow the bad taste. Nobody does it anymore as the region grew economically and coffee beans got comparatively cheaper vs, say, labour costs and real estate. In Vietnam, bicycles have been replaced by mopeds. In Mumbai, motorised autorickshaws have completely replaced the people-drawn ones (which I'm told still exist in places like Chennai). Does that make both cities less "authentic"?
Paris is my favorite example of a city that is so stuck in its past it refuses to acknowledge its own philosophy. Haussmann's razing and rebuilding of the entire city had purely modern ambitions: clean up the sewers that most of the badly built streets had become, reduce fire risk, accomodate higher population density, encourage trade via better transport infrastructure, and so on. But Parisians have arbitrarily decided that Hausmannian architecture - which was motivated by practical considerations - is "pretty" and refuse to approve anything that would help make Paris a more modern city (at least outside the Defense, and the Tour Montparnasse), forcing real estate prices through the roof and Parisians to endure hour-long commutes. One side effect is that the city is popular with tourists who can travel in time, of course. But would you rather be a Venetian or a New Yorker?
What makes China (and, to be honest, modern Southeast Asia outside the American party towns like Phuket) so fascinating is that it is rapidly opening to the world and attempting to pull several hundred million people into the middle class by any means possible. This, not the pretty grey hutongs or "characteristic" street meat sticks is what makes it an interesting place to see and do business in. In my humble ang moh opinion.