Journal articles on the topic 'Ski hotel'

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a first evaluation of the effectiveness of the early bird discount on ski lift tickets by estimating the impact on hotel overnight stays of the Saas-Fee destination. Design/methodology/approach The difference-in-differences (DID) approach is used to compare winter sport destinations with and without the price reduction before and after the introduction of the price discount. The sample is composed of the 54 largest Swiss winter sport destinations for the seasons 2013/2014 and 2016/2017. Findings DID estimations show an increase in overnight stays of Swiss residents by 50 per cent as compared to the control group. Quantile regression estimations for the conditional upper part of the overnight stays distribution reveal a lower average treatment effect of 38 per cent. However, DID estimates for total overnight stays (domestic and foreign) are much smaller – about 17 per cent – indicating that the price reductions are not effective in attracting foreign visitors. Results are not sensitive when taking into account a large number of control variables (elevation, size and snow making capacity). Research limitations/implications As tourists visiting winter sport destinations are interested in a mix of activities, lift ticket revenues or number of skier days should be used as an alternative outcome measure. Practical implications As positive effects on local tourism demand are mainly limited to Swiss tourists, such price strategies should be carefully considered. In the long term, the skiing market will stagnate or even shrink for several reasons (population ageing, climate change and changes in leisure preferences). Originality value This paper provides a first quantitative evaluation of price discounts in tourism research. Knowledge about the discounts and consumers reactions to sales promotions are of great interest to marketing managers in today’s competitive ski market.

Two California cosmetic surgeons are in the news. The first is Tony Ryan, a general plastic surgeon from Santa Barbara. We meet Tony and his wife, Montana, at the Little Nell Hotel in Aspen, Colo, where they are on a working ski vacation. Tony is the fictional creation of Mark Berman, Santa Monica cosmetic surgeon and chairman of the Academy's credentials committee. Mark's book, titled Substance of Abuse, is about Tony assuming the job of leading the country's first experimental legal drug program in Santa Barbara. It involves a murder, political corruption, a smart wife, and international travel and intrigue. It is reminiscent of John Grisham's novel The Firm. The underlying theme of the work is libertarian and points out the failure of the war on drugs. Illegal drugs cost us tens of billions of dollars a year because users commit crimes in order to keep buying, causing police and prosecutors to expend their time and resources chasing drug users instead of real criminals. Moreover, our overflowing prisons are full of criminals convicted of so-called victimless crimes, and those incarcerated drug criminals are taken out of the economy, often leaving their families wards of the state. Perhaps someday drug usage will be decriminalized and an effective system of rehabilitation will be in its place.

Hotel Swiss-Belinn Pekanbaru adalah salah satu dari 3 (tiga) Hotel Bintang di Pekanbaru. Hotel ini memiliki lokasi yang strategis meskipun tidak berada di Pusat Kota dan memiliki gedung pertemuan terbesar di kota Pekanbaru, yaitu SKA Convention and Exhibition (SKA Co Ex). Persaingan yang tinggi di antara hotel-hotel berbintang di Kota Pekanbaru menyebabkan kamar Hunian di Swiss-Belinn Hotel Pekanbaru tidak memenuhi target yang ditetapkan oleh manajemen. Dalam upaya untuk menarik pelanggan untuk menginap di Swiss-Belinn Pekanbaru Hotel, manajemen kemudian memanfaatkan Gedung Pertemuan dan menawarkan lebih banyak paket acara dari Hotel lain di Kota Pekanbaru. Dalam hal peluang, saat ini acara pemasaran merupakan upaya yang baik untuk meningkatkan hunian. Melalui acara yang digelar, para wisatawan akan memilih hotel tempat mereka menginap sehingga ini akan membantu meningkatkan hunian kamar di Hotel. Alasan mengambil judul ini adalah untuk mengetahui paket produk acara yang ditawarkan di Hotel Swiss-Belinn Pekanbaru. Kemudian untuk mengetahui tingkat hunian kamar di Swiss-Belinn Hotel Pekanbaru. Selain itu, juga untuk mengetahui pengaruh acara terhadap peningkatan ruang hunian di Swiss-Belinn Hotel Pekanbaru. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode deskriptif kualitatif dengan teknik pengumpulan data berupa observasi, wawancara dan dokumentasi. Hasil penelitian ini, diketahui bahwa ada lebih banyak paket acara yang ditawarkan oleh Swiss-Belinn Hotels Pekanbaru dengan kelebihan masing-masing. Dan berdasarkan data primer yang diperoleh penulis, diketahui bahwa tingkat hunian hotel Swiss-Belinn Pekanbaru dalam kategori tidak cukup tinggi. Selain itu, setelah memproses data, diketahui bahwa tidak semua paket acara yang ditawarkan berpengaruh pada peningkatan ruang hunian. Hanya ada satu paket yang memiliki efek cukup tinggi, yaitu paket yang disebut paket Hunian. Dari rata-rata efek paket yang diketahui ke ruang hunian adalah 60% dari total ruang hunian.

The article analyses the Olympic project inf uence on Sochi health resort modern tourist infrastructure formation and development. It is focused on the analysis of the processes, which took place in collective means of accommodation system on the dif erent stages of Olympic project implementation. In particular, the article contains the analysis of the data on collective means of accommodation number and structure changes, as long as hotel room capacity of the city at the time of Candidature File set up didn’t met the IOC requirements and conf ned Sochi’s development possibilities in its function as a mountain and ski resort. Examination of changes in local tourist infrastructure was carried out in order to estimate to what degree the goals proclaimed in Candidature File were implemented, including the task to assure conditions to convert Sochi resort to all-year-round world class resort and its further sustainable development. An improvement of accommodation system is considered as one of the most important conditions of tourist f ows’ growth and ef ective usage of material and nonmaterial Olympic Games 2014 Legacy. An important aspect of this research is the current situation analysis and identif cation of problems, which prevent ef ective usage of Sochi tourist infrastructure established in post-Olympic period. After examination of tourist industry internal and external factors that determine the tourist f ows capacity and dynamics we conclude that transport accessibility is the most important condition of tourist f ows stable growth. Materials presented in the article are the intermediate research results of the project “The analysis of sociopolitical, economic and ecological consequences of Olympic project implementation” which is being carried out within the frameworks of RAS Presidium fundamental research program №32.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test for the presence of bubbles in the US lodging/hotel real estate investment trust (REIT) subsector from 1994 to 2016. It also compares the profitability of a buy-and-hold strategy with several technical trading rules when applied to lodging REITs. Design/methodology/approach To investigate speculative bubbles, the sequential right-sided unit root tests of Phillips, Shi and Yu (2015a, b) are used. Findings The results confirm the possibility of the existence of multiple bubbles and explosive behavior in prices and the price-dividend ratio. One of the detected bubbles coincides with the financial economic crisis of 2008 using both measures. In addition, several technical rules are found to be superior to a naïve buy-and-hold strategy even after adjusting for risk. Practical implications These findings will be of interest to policy makers, who can use such models as an early alert to take anticipative action to avoid bursting of bubbles and consequent negative effects on the economy. The findings also provide important information to investors attempting to devise trading rules that utilize the signals from bubble detection, as well as to hotel executives devising policies aimed at reducing risk and creating more firm value to maximize shareholder wealth. Moreover, valuation and bubbles are important to lenders and creditors who use assets as collaterals for financing hotel REITs. Originality/value Hotels are a unique hybrid of retail and housing that combine operating business with real estate. This paper is the first to investigate speculative bubbles in lodging REITs.

A characteristic feature of the first guesthouses and hotels in the towns located in the Giant Mountains was their location in close connection with nature. Usually, the developments from the turn of the 20th century freely blended in with a green space amongst immeasurable mountain landscape or a romantic park layout as well as sports and recreation areas. Sports venues such as toboggan runs, bobsleigh runs, ski jumping hills, ski lifts, ski runs, tennis courts, swimming pools and ice rinks were situated in a way giving the impression of a compositional and functional whole with villas and guesthouses. They were placed within larger green spaces with a wide view of the Giant Mountains range from one side or the Jizera Mountains on the other, in direct contact with forest nature and fresh air. The tourist and residential developments were supposed to be an elegant background for sporting events with the mutual use of all natural values of the landscape. Over time, a change in the needs and expectations of tourists and athletes resulted in the fact that some sports areas lost their original purpose or were re-developed. In this situation, guesthouses and hotels lost their attractive neighbourhood. Apart from many other reasons, the harmony between developed areas and open, green areas was disturbed.

This paper presents results of a study on split air conditioning (AC) performance of a city hotel in Bali, Indonesia. The study applied a practical global approach to appraising the performance of existing AC systems and their installation in a city hotel. The results obtained indicate that improper AC system selection and installation potentially reduces their energy performance which include COP (coefficient of performance), EER (energy efficiency ratio), and SEI (system efficiency index). The finding also shows that improper system selection and installation has damaged 54 unit compressors of 90 AC systems installed in a particular building within three years’ period. Overall number of compressors that have been damaged in three years can reach 76 units accounted for about 23.1% of the total AC systems installed in the hotel. It is also found a reduction on AC system cooling capacity.

Existing structures must be adapted to comply with current standards or for space efficiency requirements. This adaptation may include the need to create openings in existing walls. In load bearing walls, the loading path is locally altered and the new path needs to be strengthened. In this paper, a strengthening practice technique based on the introduction of steel beams and steel portal frames and currently applied in Haussmannian buildings and French Alps Ski resort hotels is described. This technique is widely used and applied to walls with different materials and thicknesses or different openings geometry and for a high variety of loadings, presenting acceptable results along time. The knowledge presented in this work is intended to give guidance to numerical and experimental research related to opening strengthening, to strengthening guidelines definition and at the same time to support and encourage the development of innovating wall openings strengthening techniques.

Penelitian ini adalah penelitian yang mengkaji tentang sejauh mana pengaruh komunikasi motivasi dan lingkungan kerja terhadap kinerja karyawan Hotel Davina Inn kabupaten Majene. Penelitian ini adalah penelitian populasi dan mengambil seluruh Karyawan Shi sebanyak 37 responden untuk pengujian. Teknik pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan cara observasi dan kuesioner. Variabel utama dalam penelitian ini Komunikasi (X1), Motivasi (X2) dan Lingkungan Kerja (X3) terhadap Kinerja Karyawan (Y), sedangkan teknik analisis yang digunakan dalam penelitian menggunakan analisis regresi linier berganda, dengan bantuan program SPSS versi 24,0. bahwa stress kerja dan lingkungan kerja berhubungan dengan nilai f hitung 17,597 pada tingkat signifikan 5 % (0,05) nilai p = 0,000 yang berarti bahwa variabel komunikasi(x1), motivasi (x3)lingkungan kerja (x3), secara bersama-sama berpengaruh terhadap kinerja karyawan pada Hotel Davina Inn kabupaten Majene.Kontribusi pengaruh komunikasi dan lingkungan kerja berpengaruh positif terhadap kinerja karyawan. Hipotesis III dapat dinyatakan diterima sebagian, karena stress kerja dan lingkungan kerja yang berpengaruh positif dan signifikan terhadap kinerja karyawan. Sedangkan stres kerja berpengaruh positif namun tidak signifikan terhadap kinerja karyawan. Hal ini berarti hasil penelitian ini tidak bisa digunakan untuk mengeneralisir bahwa lingkungan kerja dan stres kerja berpengaruh secara simultan terhadap kinerja karyawan pada Hotel Davina Inn Kabupaten Majene. Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa kinerja karyawan sebagai hasil interaksi manusia dengan lingkungan kerja. Banyak faktor agar karyawan mempunyai motif berprestasi, antara lain karena faktor kepercayaan atasan komunikasi, motivasi dan lingkungan kerja.

This research aims to examine the effects of coaching and mentoring on Employee performance in the UK hotel industry. It also examines the extent of employee performance in association to coaching and mentoring; and examines the effects of coaching and mentoring on overall organisational performance. This study is based on cross-sectional method, deductive and quantitative approach. A sample of 172 managers and supervisors who have already worked as coach or mentors in the respective hotels are chosen by using convenience sampling technique. The survey strategy by using structured questionnaires was used for data collection. The collected data was analysed by using arithmetic mean, correlation, regression with the help of SPSS 20. This research confirmed that coaching and mentoring are positively correlated to employee performance and both factors have significant effect on employee performance. As the regression analysis shows that coaching has significant effects on overall employee performance as β = 0.466 and P = 0.007 which is less than 0.05. Similarly, mentoring has also significant effects on overall employee performance as β = 0.457, and P = 0.008 which is less than 0.05. Similarly, coaching and overall organisational performance are positively and significantly correlated as r = 0.707; and mentoring and overall organisational performance are also positively correlated as r = 0.456. The regression analysis shows that coaching has significant effects on overall organisational performance as β = 0.700 and P = 0.002 which is less than 0.05. But, mentoring has not significant effects on overall organisational performance as β = 0.010 and P = 0.961 which is greater than 0.05.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijssm.v2i2.12323 Int. J. Soc. Sci. Manage. Vol-2, issue-2: 123-138

Abstract The caricature published in Chemistry and Industry, 2 August 1947, is Fred May’s impressions of the luncheon offered to the XIth International Congress of Pure and Applied Chemistry at the May Fair Hotel, London, 18 July 1947 by the Society of Chemical Industry to distinguished chemists on the occasion of its centennial [1]. Fred May (1891-1976) was a caricaturist and painter, who sent his first cartoons from the front in 1917. May insists on the strenuous time the toastmaster had during the dinner that welcomed many prominent British and international figures in the chemical sciences and industry. Dr Leslie H. Lampitt, president of the SCI, chairman of the Congress and treasurer of IUPAC (1947-1957) “expressed that welcome in a very homely way” [1]. William Hulme Lever, 2nd Viscount Leverhulme (1888-1949), cofounder of Unilever, a past president of the SCI, acted as president of the Congress [2].

Present study was conducted to determine the microbiological status of water from dispensers in different roadside hotel and restaurants of Dhaka city. Samples were collected from seven hotel and restaurants. Aerobic heterotrophic bacterial count ranged between 1.5 × 10 and 8.8 × 103 cfu/ml. Enteric and related bacterial abundance in MacConkey, SS and Cetrimide agar media ranged from 0 to 4.9 × 106, 0 to 2.1 × 105 and 0 to 1.2 × 106cfu/ml, respectively. In total, 28 bacterial isolates were obtained during the study period. Among them, 15 were heterotrophic isolates and 13 were enteric and related bacteria. Among 15 aerobic heterotrophic isolates, 11 were gram positive and five were gram negative. Out of 11 gram positive isolates, 7 belonged to the genus Bacillus viz. B. circulans, B. subtilis, B. stearothermophilus, B. brevis and B. cereus and one to coccus viz. Micrococcus roseus. The other gram positive species were Kurtia gibsonii, Auriobacterium liguefaciens and Curtobacterium luteum. Four gram negative isolates were Neisseria elongate sub. spp. glycolytica, Plesiomonas shigelloides, Pseudomonas fluorescens biovar 1, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. All 13 enteric and related isolates were gram negative, short rod; and non-spore formers and belonged to the genera Escherichia, Klebsiella, Shigella and Pseudomonas. Among all isolates, two were resistant and six were susceptible to all five antibiotics. Asiat. Soc. Bangladesh, Sci. 43(2): 173-180, December 2017

Owing to fast pace of urbanization and associated development, Dubai rose to global prominence in a matter of a few years. Dubai has transformed its geographical incapacities to phantasmagorical way of living; from building the superlative structures to its magnificent architectural fantasies, to the reconfiguring of a desert into an urban hub of business, logistics, tourism, and retail shopping paradise. In the race to achieve global competence, it has changed its ecological realities into pursuits driven by enigma of capital and desire of hyper-consumerism. The creation of the cityscape paralleled by vanishing natural and cultural spaces of the recent past, retrofitted with global desires like shopping complexes, beach resorts, luxurious hotels, ski clubs, art museums, operas, etc. The article is situated in the context of the urban spatial transformation of Dubai, driven by neoliberal politics and the changing human–nature relationships riding on the accelerating capital circulation.

Festivals are part of living in India and are known for bringing upliftment in moods and well beings of individuals. With the changing lifestyle in metros, young generations are in transition of adopting new modern cultural and food habits such as dining out. The present paper studies the impact of Navratras festival on subjective wellbeing of vegetarian customers in fast food joints and hotels. The paper employed a survey research design and convenient critical analysis from vegetarian customers and hoteliers. The sample (N250) was customers in all categories hotels and fast food joints in Delhi NCR. Data was collected using questions adapted from standardized tool of Sell and Nagpal’s The Subjective Wellbeing Inventory (1992) and an interview schedule was adopted. Findings revealed that celebrating Navratras outside reflects changing life style and has a positive impact on customers’ subjective wellbeing.Int. J. Soc. Sci. Manage. Vol-2, issue-4: 333-338

ABSTRACTThere are two classes of airborne tourism in Antarctica: overflights without landing, and fl ights including landing. The earliest overflight was in 1956, but there were no regular flights until 1977, when Qantas and Air New Zealand began overflights with wide-bodied aircraft. A crash on Mount Erebus in 1979 that killed 257 people drew attention to the absence of effective planning, air traffic control, and rescue services. Landings began in the South Shetland Islands in 1982, when C-130 aircraft of Fuerza Aerea de Chile brought passengers from Punta Arenas. Since 1983, tourists have been accommodated in a Chilean government hostel. Flights to the interior began in 1984 when climbers were taken to the Sentinel Range by ski-equipped aircraft. Unmodified transport aircraft have been used since 1987, making wheel landings on naturally occurring bare ice in the Heritage Range. Tourists were taken from this site to the South Pole in 1988 by smaller, ski-equipped aircraft. Owing to the lack of conventional airfields in Antarctica, the future of intercontinental operations may depend on the development of additional airfields on bare ice. There are many possible sites. Most are near the periphery of the continent but some are in high latitudes, one only 300 km from the South Pole. A few of these will allow direct flights of unmodified passenger aircraft from South America, South Africa, Australia, or New Zealand. The possibility of 300 day-trippers stepping onto the ice from a Boeing 747 raises a variety of safety and environmental concerns. The challenge to the Antarctic Treaty System will be to reconcile the interests of governments, scientists, airlines, tour operators, tourists, and environmentalists.

Das 27. Bernburger Winterseminar für Arznei- und Gewürzpflanzen bot wie in den vergangenen Jahren ein produktives Diskussionsforum zwischen Anbauern, Herstellern von pflanzlichen Produkten und der Wissenschaft. Mehr als 280 Teilnehmer kamen am 21. und 22. Februar 2017 nach Bernburg, was eine deutliche Steigerung gegenüber den vergangenen Jahren darstellte und die Kapazität der Bernburger Hotels leicht überforderte – aber schließlich fand jeder im näheren Umland ein Bett für die Nacht. Wie immer wurde die Tagung von Saluplanta e. V. organisiert; an dieser Stelle sei schon einmal Herrn Bernd Hoppe herzlich gedankt.

This study aims to analyze competitiveness level of tourism industry in Semarang Municipality. The data used in this research are secondary data from Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS/BPS) and Culture and Tourism Office of Semarang Municipality. Moreover, this study uses an analytical tool, i.e competitiveness monitor (CM) method. The result shows that Semarang Municipality has several lower indicators of competitiveness calculation than Surakarta Municipality and Magelang Regency, i.e. Human Tourism Indicator (HTI), Environment Indicator (EI), and Human Resources Indicator (HRI). On the other hand, Semarang Municipality also has some higher competitiveness calculation indicators compared to that of Surakarta Municipality and Magelang Regency in Price Competitiveness Indicator (PCI), Infrastructure Development Indicator (IDI), Openness Indicator (OI) and Social Development Indicator (SDI). The improvement of tourism competitiveness in Semarang Municipality requires synergy from many parties, including the government, business actors in tourism sector (hotel owners, travel bureaus), private sector and academics.

Large numbers of people live or work at high altitude, and many visit to trek or ski. The inevitable hypoxia impairs physical working capacity, and at higher altitudes there is also cognitive impairment. Twenty years ago oxygen enrichment of room air was introduced to reduce the hypoxia, and this is now used in dormitories, hotels, mines, and telescopes. However, recent advances in technology now allow large amounts of oxygen to be obtained from air or cryogenic oxygen sources. As a result it is now feasible to oxygenate large buildings and even institutions such as hospitals. An analogy can be drawn between air conditioning that has improved the living and working conditions of millions of people who live in hot climates and oxygen conditioning that can do the same at high altitude. Oxygen conditioning is similar to air conditioning except that instead of cooling the air, the oxygen concentration is raised, thus reducing the equivalent altitude. Oxygen conditioning on a large scale could transform living and working conditions at high altitude, where it could be valuable in homes, hospitals, schools, dormitories, company headquarters, banks, and legislative settings.

Completion of the transportation problems in the city of Pekanbaru currently only looked at in terms of congestion, but not touching insights from environmental aspects such as performance air pollution and noise levels. This research was conducted at the observation point road ahead Repair Tambusai lord Eastern Daihatshu, road Tuanku Tambusai West Side Mall SKA, North Soekarno Hatta street front retail outlets, street front Soekarno Hatta South Hotel Ibis Pekanbaru. V / C Ratio highest in the afternoon rush hour on the road ahead Tambusai lord Stations Daihatsu ie 0.86 pelyanan road performance E. Quality Standard ambient NOx emissions do not exceed the threshold of ambient quality standards, the NOx emission = 281.76 mg/m3. Quality Standard ambient CO emissions do not exceed the threshold of ambient quality standards, namely emission = 7456.79 mg/m3, the noise level over the limit of noise that is 71.41 dB (A). To balance the load reduction in pollutant emissions and noise levels at the flyover plan with the plan of special bus lane traffic volume assumptions have to move 25% of the transfer of the road users of private vehicles and motorbikes switch to using mass public transport vehicles ie Trans Metro bus Pekanbaru.

The main purpose of this research is to examine the effects of sustainable tourism on sustainable community development in coastal regions in the UK. This research also seeks to investigate the extent of sustainable tourism practices and the extent of sustainable community development practices in the coastal regions in the UK.The study was conducted by deductive approach cross sectional method following quantitative techniques. The respondents are selected from hotels, restaurants, travel agencies who are operating their business activities in the coastal regions, and the local council of the coastal regions. The questionnaires survey was used to collect primary data from the respondents. The sample of 160 respondents was selected by using convenience sampling technique or on the basis of their availability and interest.The results indicate that sustainable tourism and sustainable community development are positively and significantly correlated with each other. Similarly, regression analysis shows that sustainable tourism has significant effects on sustainable community development as β = 0.804, and P = 0.000 which is less than 0.05. Also, there is a high level of sustainable tourism and sustainable community development practices in the coastal regions in the UK.Int. J. Soc. Sci. Manage. Vol-3, issue-1: 47-59

The Carpathian Skiing Society in LvivVery few people interested in the history of Polish skiing realise that it began in the second half of the 19th century in Galicia. It was first in the Eastern Carpathians that skis began to be used by foresters wanting to move more easily in their work and slightly later by tourists in their highland treks. In the late 19th century skiers appeared in Lviv, where in the early 20th century the sport began to be promoted by the Popular Entertainment Society. This was also where various institutions dealing with skiing were established, institutions like the Skiing Section of the Czarni Sports Club and, above all, the Carpathian Skiing Society founded in early 1907, the first Polish association seeking to popularise skiing as its main objective. The society’s founders included Kazimierz Panek, Maksymilian Dudryk, Zygmunt Klemensiewicz, Roman Kordys and Eugeniusz Romer, i.e. well-known mountaineers, tourists or even skiers. In addition to popularising skiing, e.g. by conducting training courses and publishing various manuals, the Society soon brought about a construction of a hostel in Sławsko. The resort became a favourite among Lviv skiers because of the excellent skiing conditions and good railway connection to Lviv. Burned during the war in May 1915, it was quickly rebuilt after the war and faithfully served tourists throughout the interwar period. On the day of its reopening, 11 March 1923, the Polish Skiing Association organised the 4th Polish Skiing Championship in Sławsko. By establishing its regional branches, the Carpathian Skiing Society promoted tourism in the Carpathians, initially in Galicia, and then throughout the Carpathian region in the Second Polish Republic. Kraków was the seat of a branch of the Society, which gave rise to another association, another important contributor to the development of Polish skiing — the Tatra Skiing Society. In 1919 the two organisations, together with three others, founded the Polish Skiing Association. Initially, the Society was active both in sport and tourism; later, given the easier access to Alps-type mountains with better snow conditions the Tatras for skiers from Zakopane, skiers from the region achieved much better results than their Lviv counterparts. The most important sporting achievements that should be noted include the successes of Janina Loteczkowa, who for several years in the second half of the 1920s had no equals in Europe. The Society was represented at the St. Moritz Olympics by Franciszek Kawa. In addition, the Society was instrumental in the construction of a professional ski jumping hill in Lviv. The 1930s were marked by a clear turn towards tourism, resulting in the construction and opening, in 1936, of a mountain hostel on Maryszewska. It is worth stressing, therefore, that such a relatively small organisation its membership never exceeded 400 in one year could do so much for the development of skiing in Poland.

In the article the author mentions some modern publications on this issue in the era of Alexander I and Nicholas I in connection with the description of the travelling theme in the context of everyday life history. As an example of the Russian Province, the article considers Smolensk Governorate which was located at the crossroads of routes from Europe to the center of Russia through Baltic, Belarusian and Ukrainian Provinces. On the basis of the materials of the State Archive of the Smolensk region (GASO) from the funds of the Chancellery of Smolensk Governor, the Smolensk Oblast Duma, metric books of Roman Catholic Church in Smolensk and published memoirs (Eugene Hess’ diary and E. Montulé’s notes) the author of the article reconstructs foreign hotel owners’ biographies (S.I. Chapa, D.K. Nolchini, V.I. Gaber), masters of carriage business (D.I. Graf, K.B. Weber), a city coachman, the owner of a coffee house (H. Podrut). All these people were united by their origin (they came from European countries) and their involvement (due to their professional activities) in servicing travelers who found themselves in the Russian Province. Life circumstances and development of their own business forced them to settle far away from their homeland; most of them became citizens of the empire, having connected themselves with Russia forever. In the article it is underlined that foreigners’ involvement in «tourist business» of the considered epoch testifies not only to the benefit of their business activity, but also to the importance of the psychological factor – the very possibility of meeting with compatriots and representatives of other European countries.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics have been postponed due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The implications for industries related to the Olympics—tourism, hotels and restaurants, and others—are expected to be affected by reduced demand. Japanese workers in these industries were prepared to offer their hospitality to visitors from around the world. They would be benefited not only by an increase in income but also in offering visitors a taste of Tokyo’s great hospitality if the Olympics had been held in 2020. However, postponement of the sporting event is likely to have a significant impact on their happiness level. We independently collected individual-level panel data from March to April 2020. In the survey, the respondents were asked about their happiness levels by choosing from 11 categories: 1 (very unhappy) and 11 (very happy). They were also asked about expected income changes from 2020 to 2021. Based on this, we examined the effect of postponement on happiness level and expected income change. The sample was divided into sub-samples of areas including and excluding Tokyo. We found that the happiness level of workers in the tourism and restaurant sectors declined drastically after the announcement of the postponement. Only two weeks later, their happiness level did not alter from the pre-announcement level. This tendency was strongly observed in Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures, but not in other prefectures. However, workers engaged in the tourism and restaurant sectors did not predict a decrease in their income even after the postponement. Combined, these findings indicate that loss of extending hospitality, rather than reduction in income, temporarily reduces the happiness level of workers.

In the current scenario quality control became mandatory for all the sectors .This study is intended to examine the impact of internet facilities on students’ performance through a Blended Learning as a medium in an academic institution. It was examined, how the Blended Learning encompasses a variety of tools to create flexible, rich learning environments that stimulate learners and maximizes the potential for learning? Another objective is Application of Six Sigma methodology in this study is to improve the medium of learning i.e. internet connectivity through a set of procedures in an effective way. Six Sigma can be again viewed as a discipline or an approach driven by data and methodology for eliminating defects in any process- from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service.Keeping the aforesaid two objectives in mind, data was collected from a sample of 119 students residing in various hostel blocks using stratified random sampling technique. Questionnaire was developed after an extensive literature review to measure the impact of internet connectivity in Blended Learning of the students. The questionnaire to measure was based on the model developed by Shawn M. Glynn (2011).The scale was developed by referring to previous models developed by various authors to measure the impact of internet connectivity in the Blended Learning of the students. The statistical analysis used was reliability statistics, KMO, Bartlett’s test and Factor Analysis. The data was analyzed by SPSS version 20). We observed that application of Six Sigma methodology is useful to improve the medium of learning.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ijssm.v2i1.11520 Int. J. Soc. Sci. Manage. Vol-2, issue-1: 36-39

This paper examines and analyzes the history of the development of the sanatorium and tourism industry in the Crimea, analyzes the sanatorium and resort complexes of the southern coast of Crimea and gives recommendations for their reconstruction. The paper highlights 5 characteristic periods of development of the Spa industry in the Crimea. The first period-the beginning of the XIX century. - 1917-the time of origin of the sanatorium and tourism industry in the Crimea. The appearance of the first Crimean resorts and sanatoriums mud treatment in Saki. During this period, opened: boarding house "Darsan" (1897, Yalta), sanatorium in honor of the Emperor Alexander III (1900, village. Massandra), sanatorium. Empress Maria Feodorovna (1910, Yalta). The second period-1917-1944 - was the period of formation of the socialist system of Spa treatment and recreation. At this time, palaces, cottages, mansions were given over to sanatoriums for workers and peasants. The third period-1944-1950 (post-war time) - the period of restoration of sanatorium-resort complexes. The fourth period – 1951-1990. during this period, a powerful system of planned recreation and tourism was formed in the Crimea. The fifth period-1991 – present. Since the late 90's, the number of private boarding houses, recreation centers, and hotels has increased significantly. However, many of them do not meet regulatory requirements, international standards and expectations of tourists. Considered Spa complexes are located on the territory of the southern coast of Crimea. These institutions are United by one feature: the presence in its composition of cultural heritage and buildings of the Soviet period, which do not have artistic expression. The article analyzes the shortcomings of Spa complexes and gives recommendations for their reconstruction.

The micronutrient status of the soils and leaf of cocoa, kola, cashew and coffee plantations to study the soil-plant micronutrient content relationship in the plantation soils for proper management towards optimum production of the crops was investigated at Uhonmora, Edo State, Nigeria. Soil and leaf samples were collected from these plantations and analyzed according to standard laboratory procedures. The soil samples were analyzed for the micronutrients (Cu, Mn, Zn and Fe) and in addition pH, organic carbon, sand, silt and clay contents, while the leaves were analyzed for only the micronutrient contents. Results indicated that the soils were sandy loam, acidic, low in organic carbon, deficient in Cu and Mn but very high in Fe and Zn contents. This probably resulted in nutrient imbalance in the soils and the deficiency of the nutrients in the crops. The plantations therefore require application of organic manures and micronutrient fertilizers to rectify the inadequate soil organic matter and to supply sufficient amount of Cu and Mn in the soils, to obtain quality fruit yield at optimum level from the plantations.Keywords: Cashew, cocoa, coffee, kola, micronutrients, sustainable production [How to Cite: Ogeh JS and RR Ipinmoroti. 2013. Micronutrient Assessment of Cocoa, Kola, Cashew and Coffee Plantations for Sustainable Production at Uhonmora, Edo State, Nigeria. J Trop Soils 18 (2): 93-97. Doi: 10.5400/jts.2013.18.2.93] [Permalink/DOI: www.dx.doi.org/10.5400/jts.2013.18.2.93] REFERENCESAdebiyi S, EO Uwagbue, EA Agbongiarhuoyi, I Ndagi and EO Aigbekaen. 2011. Assessment of agronomic practices among kola farmers in Osun State, Nigeria. World J Agric Sci 7: 400-403.Afolabi CA and NE Egbe. 1984. Yield response of kola to N, P and K fertilizer application: A case study of preliminary trial. Cafe Cacao The 28: 13-16. AOAC [Association of Official Analytical Chemists]. 1990. Official Methods of Analysis, 15th Edition. Washington DC: 774-784.Ayanlaja SA. 1983. Rehabilitation of cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) in Nigeria: Major problem and possible solution. Plant Soil 73: 403-409.CBN [Central Bank of Nigeria]. 2010. Annual Report and Statement of Accounts for the year. Abuja, Nigeria. 182 p.Chude VO and GO Obigbesan. 1983. Safe and toxic application rates of boron for cocoa seedlings. Plant Soil 74: 145-147.Egbe NE, EA Ayodele and CR Obatolu. 1989. Soils and nutrition of cocoa, coffee, kola cashew and tea. Prog Tree Crop Res 2: 28-38.Falade JA. 1978. Cashew growing soil in Nigeria. East Afr Agric J 43: 100-105. FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization]. 2010. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://faostat.fao.org/site/567/DesktopDefault.aspx? PageID=567#ancor. Accessed on 21 January 2010.Ibiremo OS and O Fagbola. 2008. Effect of phosphorus fertilizer and arbuscular mycorhizal fungi inoculation on the growth of cashew seedlings in two soils in Nigeria. Nigerian J Soil Sci 18: 138-146.Ipinmoroti RR, OSO Akanbi, MA Daniel, LA Adebowale, GA Adewoye, EA Makinde and CO Kayode. 2011. Potentials of NPK and organic fertilizers on growth performance of cashew (Anacardium occidentale L.) seedlings on degraded typic alfisol soils in Ibadan, Nigeria. J Agric Sci Tech 1: 876-881.Ipinmoroti RR, P Aikpokpodion and OSO Akanbi. 2009. Nutritional assessment of cocoa plots for soil fertility management on some cocoa farms in Nigeria. Proceedings of 16th International Cocoa Research Conference Held at Grand Hyatt Hotel, Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, pp 1481-1485.Iremiren GO and AM Ekhomun. 2005. Effects of N fertilizer rates on the performance of maize-okra mixture in an acid sand soil of the Nigerian forest zone. Nigerian J Appl Sci 23: 11-14. McKenzie RH. 2001. Micronutrient requirements of crops. Alberta Agriculture and Rural development http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex713. Acessed on 21 July 2011.Nelson DW and LE Sommers. 1982. Organic carbon and soil extracts In: D L Sparks (ed). Methods of soil Analysis. Part 2- Chemical and microbiological properties. Agronomy Monograph No.9, 2nd Edition. American Society of Agronomy, Soil Science Society of America, Madison, WI, USA, pp. 539-579.Ogunlade MO, OS Ibiremo, RR Ipinmoroti, CI Iloyanomon and PE Aikpokpodion. 2011. Determination of phosphorus and potassium fixation capacities and fertilizer fctors in soils of three cocoa growing areas of Nigeria. J Soil Nat 5: 11-16.Ogunmoyela OA and CR Obatolu. 1984. Nutrient studies and fertilizer requirements of Nigeria tea. Cafe Cacao The 28: 179-184.Ogunwale JA, JO Olaniyan and MO Aduloju. 2002. Morphological, physico-chemical and clay mineralogical properties of soils overlaying basement complex rocks in Ilorin East, Nigeria. Moor J Agric Res 3: 147-154.Ojeniyi SO. 1980. Nutrient studies of NPK treated coffee plots. Plant Soil 56: 175-179.Omotoso TI. 1974. The effect of fertilizer and irrigation on the leaf macronutrient composition of Coffea canephora during a year. Turrialba 24: 315-318.Opeke LK. 1987. Tropical tree crops. Spectrum Books Limited, Ibadan, Nigeria, p 247.Wood GAR and RA Lass. 1985. Cocoa, 4th ed. London: Longman, pp. 620-632.

The purpose – We propose to capitalize on recent research on tourism marketing, destination choice, but also and mainly on conceptual reflexions and research on emotional and symbolical brand relationship . We try to understand how destinations could communicate, using destination ambassadors; in order to better attract travellers. Methodology – this is a theoretical article presenting key concepts and their relevance to tourism marketing. We present the key concepts and analyse cases or real-life examples of destination ambassadors uses, trying to show the relevance of the described concepts. We use research key concepts and results in Affective marketing, Environmental psychology, and Experiential marketing, exploring issues of persuasion by three persuasion routes through which ambasadors can impact consumer choices. Approach – This article is a case-based theoretical reflection, aimed at deepening our level of understanding of how and why ambassadors could matter in tourism destination and branding in general. We start with real-life examples, and show in several cases what does not work and why, suggesting better professional practices based on theory. Findings – We illustrate the concept of destination ambassadors with some real examples. We show that the concept of brand ambassador and destination ambassador are often understood in a very limited approach with confusion, and mot much effects because they only rely on “strike power”, famousness. We propose improvements, suggesting three persuasion routes: cognitive, affective and symbolical. We define “symbols” in branding. We find out that Affective and Symbolical marketing research could dramatically improve our understanding and good use of ambassadors in touristical destination and marketing in general. We also propose three key definitions in tourism marketing. We propose a reflection on how the Deep metaphors conceptualized by Zaltman, actually relate to Experiential marketing and do make sens in destination branding; we show that ambassadors could largely contribute to it, using such theoretical framework. In a last section, we take a number of examples and formulate recommendations to practicioners, specific to different sorts of destinations such as spas, ski resorts, hotels, etc. We also suggest to enlarge our vision of “marketing” to creating value in a more sustainable, ecological manner. It encapsulates the idea of creating value for all stakeholders, relying all the old concept of Service Profit Chain in services marketing, and on recent research in Tourism marketing. We suggest to think the option of co-branding for both destinations and ambassadors, especially via Online Social Media. The originality of the research – It consists of two main points. First, although it seems rules/breaking, we simply stick to the modern definition of marketing – marketing seen as a relationship construction process – and to research contributions, in proposing to better understand how ambassadors could be better used for creating value for targeted consumers, in a consistent manner with the destination positioning. We seem to be very provocative in questioning the practices of practicioners using mainly celebrities; but we rather want to enhance more profound practices and more efficiency in business. We also remind that Marketing is not to be seen as a Communication or Manipulation process, but as a value delivery process, and propose how ambassadors could contribute to it. Second, we draw attention on some key concepts largely ignored in Experiential marketing, and on the importance of more thought. The principle of parcimony also asks us to communicate in a less superficial manner, and in a more efficient way. In the context of Ambassadors in tourism destination, that means we might need to think and understand more, use less Celebrity effects, and more, ambassadors consistent with brand emotional and symbolical positioning. Those can be celebrities, or non famous humans, virtual agents, animals or other non human objects.

A difference-in-differences analysis is used to investigate the short-term price effects of eight sporting events in Finnish Lapland. Data consist of 220,000 room bookings from the reservation system of a nine-hotels chain. Treated hotels are those located within an area where sporting events are regularly held. The control group consists of hotels further away that are not affected by the event. Robust regressions show that hotel room prices rise by 14% on average during the event, when booking and guest specific factors are held constant. For the pre-event period, no significant positive price effect can be detected, and for the post-event period, there is even a significant negative effect of 6%, on average. In addition, there is a large variation in the price effects across the different sporting events, with the highest for the Levi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup competition (60%) and no effect for some small-scale events. Quantile regressions show that price effects are slightly higher for high-priced than for low-priced rooms.

The article examines the theoretical issues of the travel services market in the United States. The United States has a huge domestic tourism market and a highly developed infrastructure with a large hotel chain and transportation industry. Today it is important to determine the current state of the market of tourist services in the country in order to further be able to analyze and identify effective ways to develop the tourism sector in the region. The current state of development of the tourism sector of the United States of America, where the main types of tourism are beach, sports, sightseeing, business tourism is quite developed. The results of the study showed that revenues from international tourism reach 10-20% of total export revenues. In terms of the level of development of international tourism, the United States lags far behind Europe. It is investigated that domestic tourism, a highly developed "hospitality industry", including car service, has received a very large development. Tourism in the United States has become a powerful industry that annually serves millions of foreign and domestic tourists, whose goal is to see the wonders of nature, cities, attractions, so-called tourist and recreational resources. The main problems and patterns of development of the market of tourist services are revealed. The analysis of functioning of the market of tourist services is carried out, the factors influencing its territorial organization, in particular demographic, social and economic, natural, historical and cultural and infrastructural are analyzed. The dynamics of tourist flows of the country is analyzed. The structure of hotel and restaurant business is investigated. The tourist market of the United States of America was monitored with the help of SWOT-analysis. The results of the study showed that the United States has prospects in the development of tourism with neighboring countries, in improving the development of ecological tourism on the basis of numerous national parks, in the development of event and business tourism by organizing sports competitions in international forums. The United States is considered an important center of educational tourism. Here are prestigious universities that attract many foreign students: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton. The United States is the center of world sports. National hockey and basketball leagues, prestigious international tennis tournaments and ski slopes attract athletes and fans from many countries.

Tourism is a profitable sector of the economy, which, despite all current challenges, is rapidly developing and prioritized for the development of economic, social and cultural realms in many countries. Leading positions in international tourism are occupied by European countries, in particular Italy. The article analyzes the current state and territorial features of tourism development in Italy, considering natural, historical and cultural tourist recourses and country hotel fund. The analysis bases on such key indicators as the tourism contribution to gross domestic product, the tourism contribution to employment, the tourism capital investments, the tourism inbound (foreign) and outbound (abroad) volume, the international tourism receipts. The geographical structure of tourist flows in Italy is considered. The country has a considerable territorial differentiation in terms of tourism development. An integral index was calculated for Italy regions to evaluate tourism development level with subsequent classification of regions according to this indicator. The calculated indices allowed delimiting of the six groups of regions with high, higher than average, medium, lower than average, low and very low tourism development levels respectively. The features of tourism development in the regions of each group are revealed. In particular, the highest intensity of tourist arrivals is observed in the alpine regions of the country, which specialize in ski tourism. The high level of tourism development is also typical for the northern and central regions of the country. The lowest intensity of tourism is observed in the south-eastern regions of the country. In general, contemporary tourist development of the country is characterized with annual growth in the number of tourist arrivals, significant revenues from the tourism industry, positive balance of tourist flows, high share of tourism in the country’s GDP, formation of world-famous centers of tourism, high tourist rates. All this indicates that Italy remains one of the tourism leaders in the international tourism market.

This project aims to identify the views of the personnel working at the multinational lodging businesses located at ski sites in Turkey about Participant Marketing Communications Management (PMCM) practices. In this framework, the role of education in total quality management was researched. The project covered eleven marketing managers and forty five marketing staff working at the ten five-star and fourteen four-star hotels at the four largest ski centers of Turkey-Uludağ, Palandöken, Erciyes ve Sarıkamış. The data was collected according to a standard questionnaire, and was analyzed using on the ᵡ² test. Based on the results of the analysis, a statistically meaningful and positive relationship between the workers’ levels of education and their stance towards participant marketing communications management was found.

IntroductionIn this article, I set out to accomplish two tasks. The first is to map coffee and cafés in Mainland China in different historical periods. The second is to focus on coffee and cafés in the socio-cultural milieu of contemporary China in order to understand the symbolic value of the emerging coffee/café-scape. Cafés, rather than coffee, are at the centre of this current trend in contemporary Chinese cities. With instant coffee dominating as a drink, the Chinese have developed a cultural and social demand for cafés, but have not yet developed coffee palates. Historical Coffee Map In 1901, coffee was served in a restaurant in the city of Tianjin. This restaurant, named Kiessling, was run by a German chef, a former solider who came to China with the eight-nation alliance. At that time, coffee was reserved mostly for foreign politicians and military officials as well as wealthy businessmen—very few ordinary Chinese drank it. (For more history of Kiessling, including pictures and videos, see Kiessling). Another group of coffee consumers were from the cultural elites—the young revolutionary intellectuals and writers with overseas experience. It was almost a fashion among the literary elite to spend time in cafés. However, this was negatively judged as “Western” and “bourgeois.” For example, in 1932, Lu Xun, one of the most important twentieth century Chinese writers, commented on the café fashion during 1920s (133-36), and listed the reasons why he would not visit one. He did not drink coffee because it was “foreigners’ food”, and he was too busy writing for the kind of leisure enjoyed in cafés. Moreover, he did not, he wrote, have the nerve to go to a café, and particularly not the Revolutionary Café that was popular among cultural celebrities at that time. He claimed that the “paradise” of the café was for genius, and for handsome revolutionary writers (who he described as having red lips and white teeth, whereas his teeth were yellow). His final complaint was that even if he went to the Revolutionary Café, he would hesitate going in (Lu Xun 133-36). From Lu Xun’s list, we can recognise his nationalism and resistance to what were identified as Western foods and lifestyles. It is easy to also feel his dissatisfaction with those dilettante revolutionary intellectuals who spent time in cafés, talking and enjoying Western food, rather than working. In contrast to Lu Xun’s resistance to coffee and café culture, another well-known writer, Zhang Ailing, frequented cafés when she lived in Shanghai from the 1920s to 1950s. She wrote about the smell of cakes and bread sold in Kiessling’s branch store located right next to her parents’ house (Yuyue). Born into a wealthy family, exposed to Western culture and food at a very young age, Zhang Ailing liked to spend her social and writing time in cafés, ordering her favourite cakes, hot chocolate, and coffee. When she left Shanghai and immigrated to the USA, coffee was an important part of her writing life: the smell and taste reminding her of old friends and Shanghai (Chunzi). However, during Zhang’s time, it was still a privileged and elite practice to patronise a café when these were located in foreign settlements with foreign chefs, and served mainly foreigners, wealthy businessmen, and cultural celebrities. After 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China, until the late 1970s, there were no coffee shops in Mainland China. It was only when Deng Xiaoping suggested neo-liberalism as a so-called “reform-and-open-up” economic policy that foreign commerce and products were again seen in China. In 1988, ten years after the implementation of Deng Xiaoping’s policy, the Nestlé coffee company made the first inroads into the mainland market, featuring homegrown coffee beans in Yunnan province (China Beverage News; Dong; ITC). Nestlé’s bottled instant coffee found its way into the Chinese market, avoiding a direct challenge to the tea culture. Nestlé packaged its coffee to resemble health food products and marketed it as a holiday gift suitable for friends and relatives. As a symbol of modernity and “the West”, coffee-as-gift meshed with the traditional Chinese cultural custom that values gift giving. It also satisfied a collective desire for foreign products (and contact with foreign cultures) during the economic reform era. Even today, with its competitively low price, instant coffee dominates coffee consumption at home, in the workplace, and on Chinese airlines. While Nestlé aimed their product at native Chinese consumers, the multinational companies who later entered China’s coffee market, such as Sara Lee, mainly targeted international hotels such as IHG, Marriott, and Hyatt. The multinationals also favoured coffee shops like Kommune in Shanghai that offered more sophisticated kinds of coffee to foreign consumers and China’s upper class (Byers). If Nestlé introduced coffee to ordinary Chinese families, it was Starbucks who introduced the coffee-based “third space” to urban life in contemporary China on a signficant scale. Differing from the cafés before 1949, Starbucks stores are accessible to ordinary Chinese citizens. The first in Mainland China opened in Beijing’s China World Trade Center in January 1999, targeting mainly white-collar workers and foreigners. Starbucks coffee shops provide a space for informal business meetings, chatting with friends, and relaxing and, with its 500th store opened in 2011, dominate the field in China. Starbucks are located mainly in the central business districts and airports, and the company plans to have 1,500 sites by 2015 (Starbucks). Despite this massive presence, Starbucks constitutes only part of the café-scape in contemporary Chinese cities. There are two other kinds of cafés. One type is usually located in universities or residential areas and is frequented mainly by students or locals working in cultural professions. A representative of this kind is Sculpting in Time Café. In November 1997, two years before the opening of the first Starbucks in Beijing, two newlywed college graduates opened the first small Sculpting in Time Café near Beijing University’s East Gate. This has been expanded into a chain, and boasts 18 branches on the Mainland. (For more about its history, see Sculpting in Time Café). Interestingly, both Starbucks and Sculpting in Time Café acquired their names from literature, Starbucks from Moby Dick, and Sculpting in Time from the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s film diary of the same name. For Chinese students of literature and the arts, drinking coffee is less about acquiring more energy to accomplish their work, and more about entering a sensual world, where the aroma of coffee mixes with the sounds from the coffee machine and music, as well as the lighting of the space. More importantly, cafés with this ambience become, in themselves, cultural sites associated with literature, films, and music. Owners of this kind of café are often lovers of foreign literatures, films, and cultures, and their cafés host various cultural events, including forums, book clubs, movie screenings, and music clubs. Generally speaking, coffee served in this kind of café is simpler than in the kind discussed below. This third type of café includes those located in tourist and entertainment sites such as art districts, bar areas, and historical sites, and which are frequented by foreign and native tourists, artists and other cultural workers. If Starbucks cultivates a fast-paced business/professional atmosphere, and Sculpting in Time Cafés an artsy and literary atmosphere, this third kind of café is more like an upscale “bar” with trained baristas serving complicated coffees and emphasising their flavour. These coffee shops are more expensive than the other kinds, with an average price three times that of Starbucks. Currently, cafés of this type are found only in “first-tier” cities and usually located in art districts and tourist areas—such as Beijing’s 798 Art District and Nanluo Guxiang, Shanghai’s Tai Kang Road (a.k.a. “the art street”), and Hangzhou’s Westlake area. While Nestlé and Starbucks use coffee beans grown in Yunnan provinces, these “art cafés” are more inclined to use imported coffee beans from suppliers like Sara Lee. Coffee and Cafés in Contemporary China After just ten years, there are hundreds of cafés in Chinese cities. Why has there been such a demand for coffee or, more accurately, cafés, in such a short period of time? The first reason is the lack of “third space” environments in Mainland China. Before cafés appeared in the late 1990s, stores like KFC (which opened its first store in 1987) and McDonald’s (with its first store opened in 1990) filled this role for urban residents, providing locations where customers could experience Western food, meet friends, work, or read. In fact, KFC and McDonald’s were once very popular with college students looking for a place to study. Both stores had relatively clean food environments and good lighting. They also had air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, which are not provided in most Chinese university dormitories. However, since neither chain was set up to be a café and customers occupying seats for long periods while ordering minimal amounts of food or drink affected profits, staff members began to indirectly ask customers to leave after dining. At the same time, as more people were able to afford to eat at KFC and McDonald’s, their fast foods were also becoming more and more popular, especially among young people. As a consequence, both types of chain restaurant were becoming noisy and crowded and, thus, no longer ideal for reading, studying, or meeting with friends. Although tea has been a traditional drink in Chinese culture, traditional teahouses were expensive places more suitable for business meetings or for the cultural or intellectual elite. Since almost every family owns a tea set and can readily purchase tea, friends and family would usually make and consume tea at home. In recent years, however, new kinds of teahouses have emerged, similar in style to cafés, targeting the younger generation with more affordable prices and a wider range of choices, so the lack of a “third space” does not fully explain the café boom. Another factor affecting the popularity of cafés has been the development and uptake of Internet technology, including the increasing use of laptops and wireless Internet in recent years. The Internet has been available in China since the late 1990s, while computers and then laptops entered ordinary Chinese homes in the early twenty-first century. The IT industry has created not only a new field of research and production, but has also fostered new professions and demands. Particularly, in recent years in Mainland China, a new socially acceptable profession—freelancing in such areas as graphic design, photography, writing, film, music, and the fashion industry—has emerged. Most freelancers’ work is computer- and Internet-based. Cafés provide suitable working space, with wireless service, and the bonus of coffee that is, first of all, somatically stimulating. In addition, the emergence of the creative and cultural industries (which are supported by the Chinese government) has created work for these freelancers and, arguably, an increasing demand for café-based third spaces where such people can meet, talk and work. Furthermore, the flourishing of cafés in first-tier cities is part of the “aesthetic economy” (Lloyd 24) that caters to the making and selling of lifestyle experience. Alongside foreign restaurants, bars, galleries, and design firms, cafés contribute to city branding, and link a city to the global urban network. Cafés, like restaurants, galleries and bars, provide a space for the flow of global commodities, as well as for the human flow of tourists, travelling artists, freelancers, and cultural specialists. Finally, cafés provide a type of service that contributes to friendly owner/waiter-customer relations. During the planned-economy era, most stores and hotels in China were State-owned, staff salaries were not related to individual performance, and indifferent (and even unfriendly) service was common. During the economic reform era, privately owned stores and shops began to replace State-owned ones. At the same time, a large number of people from the countryside flowed into the cities seeking opportunities. Most had little if any professional training and so could only find work in factories or in the service industry. However, most café employees are urban, with better educational backgrounds, and many were already familiar with coffee culture. In addition, café owners, particularly those of places like Sculpting in Time Cafe, often invest in creating a positive, community atmosphere, learning about their customers and sharing personal experiences with their regular clients. This leads to my next point—the generation of the 1980s’ need for a social community. Cafés’ Symbolic Value—Community A demand for a sense of community among the generation of the 1980s is a unique socio-cultural phenomenon in China, which paradoxically co-exists with their desire for individualism. Mao Zedong started the “One Child Policy” in 1979 to slow the rapid population growth in China, and the generations born under this policy are often called “the lonely generations,” with both parents working full-time. At the same time, they are “the generation of me,” labelled as spoiled, self-centred, and obsessed with consumption (de Kloet; Liu; Rofel; Wang). The individuals of this generation, now aged in their 20s and 30s, constitute the primary consumers of coffee in China. Whereas individualism is an important value to them, a sense of community is also desirable in order to compensate for their lack of siblings. Furthermore, the 1980s’ generation has also benefitted from the university expansion policy implemented in 1999. Since then, China has witnessed a surge of university students and graduates who not only received scientific and other course-based knowledge, but also had a better chance to be exposed to foreign cultures through their books, music, and movies. With this interesting tension between individualism and collectivism, the atmosphere provided by cafés has fostered a series of curious temporary communities built on cultural and culinary taste. Interestingly, it has become an aspiration of many young college students and graduates to open a community-space style café in a city. One of the best examples is the new Henduoren’s (Many People’s) Café. This was a project initiated by Wen Erniu, a recent college graduate who wanted to open a café in Beijing but did not have sufficient funds to do so. She posted a message on the Internet, asking people to invest a minimum of US$316 to open a café with her. With 78 investors, the café opened in September 2011 in Beijing (see pictures of Henduoren’s Café). In an interview with the China Daily, Wen Erniu stated that, “To open a cafe was a dream of mine, but I could not afford it […] We thought opening a cafe might be many people’s dream […] and we could get together via the Internet to make it come true” (quoted in Liu 2011). Conclusion: Café Culture and (Instant) Coffee in China There is a Chinese saying that, if you hate someone—just persuade him or her to open a coffee shop. Since cafés provide spaces where one can spend a relatively long time for little financial outlay, owners have to increase prices to cover their expenses. This can result in fewer customers. In retaliation, cafés—particularly those with cultural and literary ambience—host cultural events to attract people, and/or they offer food and wine along with coffee. The high prices, however, remain. In fact, the average price of coffee in China is often higher than in Europe and North America. For example, a medium Starbucks’ caffè latte in China averaged around US$4.40 in 2010, according to the price list of a Starbucks outlet in Shanghai—and the prices has recently increased again (Xinhua 2012). This partially explains why instant coffee is still so popular in China. A bag of instant Nestlé coffee cost only some US$0.25 in a Beijing supermarket in 2010, and requires only hot water, which is accessible free almost everywhere in China, in any restaurant, office building, or household. As an habitual, addictive treat, however, coffee has not yet become a customary, let alone necessary, drink for most Chinese. Moreover, while many, especially those of the older generations, could discern the quality and varieties of tea, very few can judge the quality of the coffee served in cafés. As a result, few Mainland Chinese coffee consumers have a purely somatic demand for coffee—craving its smell or taste—and the highly sweetened and creamed instant coffee offered by companies like Nestlé or Maxwell has largely shaped the current Chinese palate for coffee. Ben Highmore has proposed that “food spaces (shops, restaurants and so on) can be seen, for some social agents, as a potential space where new ‘not-me’ worlds are encountered” (396) He continues to expand that “how these potential spaces are negotiated—the various affective registers of experience (joy, aggression, fear)—reflect the multicultural shapes of a culture (its racism, its openness, its acceptance of difference)” (396). Cafés in contemporary China provide spaces where one encounters and constructs new “not-me” worlds, and more importantly, new “with-me” worlds. While café-going communicates an appreciation and desire for new lifestyles and new selves, it can be hoped that in the near future, coffee will also be appreciated for its smell, taste, and other benefits. Of course, it is also necessary that future Chinese coffee consumers also recognise the rich and complex cultural, political, and social issues behind the coffee economy in the era of globalisation. References Byers, Paul [former Managing Director, Sara Lee’s Asia Pacific]. Pers. comm. Apr. 2012. China Beverage News. “Nestlé Acquires 70% Stake in Chinese Mineral Water Producer.” (2010). 31 Mar. 2012 ‹http://chinabevnews.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/nestle-acquires-70-stake-in-chinese-mineral-water-producer›. Chunzi. 张爱玲地图[The Map of Eileen Chang]. 汉语大词典出版 [Hanyu Dacidian Chubanshe], 2003. de Kloet, Jeroen. China with a Cut: Globalization, Urban Youth and Popular Music. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2010. Dong, Jonathan. “A Caffeinated Timeline: Developing Yunnan’s Coffee Cultivation.” China Brief (2011): 24-26. Highmore, Ben. “Alimentary Agents: Food, Cultural Theory and Multiculturalism.” Journal of Intercultural Studies, 29.4 (2008): 381-98. ITC (International Trade Center). The Coffee Sector in China: An Overview of Production, Trade And Consumption, 2010. Liu, Kang. Globalization and Cultural Trends in China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004. Liu, Zhihu. “From Virtual to Reality.” China Daily (Dec. 2011) 31 Mar. 2012 ‹http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/life/2011-12/26/content_14326490.htm›. Lloyd, Richard. Neobohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City. London: Routledge, 2006. Lu, Xun. “Geming Kafei Guan [Revolutionary Café]”. San Xian Ji. Taibei Shi: Feng Yun Shi Dai Chu Ban Gong Si: Fa Xing Suo Xue Wen Hua Gong Si, Mingguo 78 (1989): 133-36. Rofel, Lisa. Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2007: 1-30. “Starbucks Celebrates Its 500th Store Opening in Mainland China.” Starbucks Newsroom (Oct. 2011) 31 Mar. 2012. ‹http://news.starbucks.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=580›. Wang, Jing. High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: U of California P, 1996. Xinhua. “Starbucks Raises Coffee Prices in China Stores.” Xinhua News (Jan. 2012). 31 Mar. 2012 ‹http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-01/31/c_131384671.htm›. Yuyue. Ed. “On the History of the Western-Style Restaurants: Aileen Chang A Frequent Customer of Kiessling.” China.com.cn (2010). 31 Mar. 2012 ‹http://www.china.com.cn/culture/txt/2010-01/30/content_19334964.htm›.

In Ireland today, we eat more pigmeat per capita, approximately 32.4 kilograms, than any other meat, yet you very seldom if ever see a pig (C.S.O.). Fat and flavour are two words that are synonymous with pig meat, yet scientists have spent the last thirty years cross breeding to produce leaner, low-fat pigs. Today’s pig professionals prefer to use the term “pig finishing” as opposed to the more traditional “pig fattening” (Tuite). The pig evokes many themes in relation to cuisine. Charles Lamb (1775-1834), in his essay Dissertation upon Roast Pig, cites Confucius in attributing the accidental discovery of the art of roasting to the humble pig. The pig has been singled out by many cultures as a food to be avoided or even abhorred, and Harris (1997) illustrates the environmental effect this avoidance can have by contrasting the landscape of Christian Albania with that of Muslim Albania.This paper will focus on the pig in Irish cuisine and culture from ancient times to the present day. The inspiration for this paper comes from a folklore tale about how Saint Martin created the pig from a piece of fat. The story is one of a number recorded by Seán Ó Conaill, the famous Kerry storyteller and goes as follows:From St Martin’s fat they were made. He was travelling around, and one night he came to a house and yard. At that time there were only cattle; there were no pigs or piglets. He asked the man of the house if there was anything to eat the chaff and the grain. The man replied there were only the cattle. St Martin said it was a great pity to have that much chaff going to waste. At night when they were going to bed, he handed a piece of fat to the servant-girl and told her to put it under a tub, and not to look at it at all until he would give her the word next day. The girl did so, but she kept a bit of the fat and put it under a keeler to find out what it would be.When St Martin rose next day he asked her to go and lift up the tub. She lifted it up, and there under it were a sow and twelve piglets. It was a great wonder to them, as they had never before seen pig or piglet.The girl then went to the keeler and lifted it, and it was full of mice and rats! As soon as the keeler was lifted, they went running about the house searching for any hole that they could go into. When St Martin saw them, he pulled off one of his mittens and threw it at them and made a cat with that throw. And that is why the cat ever since goes after mice and rats (Ó Conaill).The place of the pig has long been established in Irish literature, and longer still in Irish topography. The word torc, a boar, like the word muc, a pig, is a common element of placenames, from Kanturk (boar’s head) in West Cork to Ros Muc (headland of pigs) in West Galway. The Irish pig had its place in literature well established long before George Orwell’s English pig, Major, headed the dictatorship in Animal Farm. It was a wild boar that killed the hero Diarmaid in the Fenian tale The Pursuit of Diarmaid and Gráinne, on top of Ben Bulben in County Sligo (Mac Con Iomaire). In Ancient and Medieval Ireland, wild boars were hunted with great fervour, and the prime cuts were reserved for the warrior classes, and certain other individuals. At a feast, a leg of pork was traditionally reserved for a king, a haunch for a queen, and a boar’s head for a charioteer. The champion warrior was given the best portion of meat (Curath Mhir or Champions’ Share), and fights often took place to decide who should receive it. Gantz (1981) describes how in the ninth century tale The story of Mac Dathó’s Pig, Cet mac Matach, got supremacy over the men of Ireland: “Moreover he flaunted his valour on high above the valour of the host, and took a knife in his hand and sat down beside the pig. “Let someone be found now among the men of Ireland”, said he, “to endure battle with me, or leave the pig for me to divide!”It did not take long before the wild pigs were domesticated. Whereas cattle might be kept for milk and sheep for wool, the only reason for pig rearing was as a source of food. Until the late medieval period, the “domesticated” pigs were fattened on woodland mast, the fruit of the beech, oak, chestnut and whitethorn, giving their flesh a delicious flavour. So important was this resource that it is acknowledged by an entry in the Annals of Clonmacnoise for the year 1038: “There was such an abundance of ackornes this yeare that it fattened the pigges [runts] of pigges” (Sexton 45). In another mythological tale, two pig keepers, one called ‘friuch’ after the boars bristle (pig keeper to the king of Munster) and the other called ‘rucht’ after its grunt (pig keeper to the king of Connacht), were such good friends that the one from the north would bring his pigs south when there was a mast of oak and beech nuts in Munster. If the mast fell in Connacht, the pig-keeper from the south would travel northward. Competitive jealousy sparked by troublemakers led to the pig keepers casting spells on each other’s herds to the effect that no matter what mast they ate they would not grow fat. Both pig keepers were practised in the pagan arts and could form themselves into any shape, and having been dismissed by their kings for the leanness of their pig herds due to the spells, they eventually formed themselves into the two famous bulls that feature in the Irish Epic The Táin (Kinsella).In the witty and satirical twelfth century text, The Vision of Mac Conglinne (Aisling Mhic Conglinne), many references are made to the various types of pig meat. Bacon, hams, sausages and puddings are often mentioned, and the gate to the fortress in the visionary land of plenty is described thus: “there was a gate of tallow to it, whereon was a bolt of sausage” (Jackson).Although pigs were always popular in Ireland, the emergence of the potato resulted in an increase in both human and pig populations. The Irish were the first Europeans to seriously consider the potato as a staple food. By 1663 it was widely accepted in Ireland as an important food plant and by 1770 it was known as the Irish Potato (Mac Con Iomaire and Gallagher). The potato transformed Ireland from an under populated island of one million in the 1590s to 8.2 million in 1840, making it the most densely populated country in Europe. Two centuries of genetic evolution resulted in potato yields growing from two tons per acre in 1670 to ten tons per acre in 1800. A constant supply of potato, which was not seen as a commercial crop, ensured that even the smallest holding could keep a few pigs on a potato-rich diet. Pat Tuite, an expert on pigs with Teagasc, the Irish Agricultural and Food Development Authority, reminded me that the potatoes were cooked for the pigs and that they also enjoyed whey, the by product of both butter and cheese making (Tuite). The agronomist, Arthur Young, while travelling through Ireland, commented in 1770 that in the town of Mitchelstown in County Cork “there seemed to be more pigs than human beings”. So plentiful were pigs at this time that on the eve of the Great Famine in 1841 the pig population was calculated to be 1,412,813 (Sexton 46). Some of the pigs were kept for home consumption but the rest were a valuable source of income and were shown great respect as the gentleman who paid the rent. Until the early twentieth century most Irish rural households kept some pigs.Pork was popular and was the main meat eaten at all feasts in the main houses; indeed a feast was considered incomplete without a whole roasted pig. In the poorer holdings, fresh pork was highly prized, as it was only available when a pig of their own was killed. Most of the pig was salted, placed in the brine barrel for a period or placed up the chimney for smoking.Certain superstitions were observed concerning the time of killing. Pigs were traditionally killed only in months that contained the letter “r”, since the heat of the summer months caused the meat to turn foul. In some counties it was believed that pigs should be killed under the full moon (Mahon 58). The main breed of pig from the medieval period was the Razor Back or Greyhound Pig, which was very efficient in converting organic waste into meat (Fitzgerald). The killing of the pig was an important ritual and a social occasion in rural Ireland, for it meant full and plenty for all. Neighbours, who came to help, brought a handful of salt for the curing, and when the work was done each would get a share of the puddings and the fresh pork. There were a number of days where it was traditional to kill a pig, the Michaelmas feast (29 September), Saint Martins Day (11 November) and St Patrick’s Day (17 March). Olive Sharkey gives a vivid description of the killing of the barrow pig in rural Ireland during the 1930s. A barrow pig is a male pig castrated before puberty:The local slaughterer (búistéir) a man experienced in the rustic art of pig killing, was approached to do the job, though some farmers killed their own pigs. When the búistéirarrived the whole family gathered round to watch the killing. His first job was to plunge the knife in the pig’s heart via the throat, using a special knife. The screeching during this performance was something awful, but the animal died instantly once the heart had been reached, usually to a round of applause from the onlookers. The animal was then draped across a pig-gib, a sort of bench, and had the fine hairs on its body scraped off. To make this a simple job the animal was immersed in hot water a number of times until the bristles were softened and easy to remove. If a few bristles were accidentally missed the bacon was known as ‘hairy bacon’!During the killing of the pig it was imperative to draw a good flow of blood to ensure good quality meat. This blood was collected in a bucket for the making of puddings. The carcass would then be hung from a hook in the shed with a basin under its head to catch the drip, and a potato was often placed in the pig’s mouth to aid the dripping process. After a few days the carcass would be dissected. Sharkey recalls that her father maintained that each pound weight in the pig’s head corresponded to a stone weight in the body. The body was washed and then each piece that was to be preserved was carefully salted and placed neatly in a barrel and hermetically sealed. It was customary in parts of the midlands to add brown sugar to the barrel at this stage, while in other areas juniper berries were placed in the fire when hanging the hams and flitches (sides of bacon), wrapped in brown paper, in the chimney for smoking (Sharkey 166). While the killing was predominantly men’s work, it was the women who took most responsibility for the curing and smoking. Puddings have always been popular in Irish cuisine. The pig’s intestines were washed well and soaked in a stream, and a mixture of onions, lard, spices, oatmeal and flour were mixed with the blood and the mixture was stuffed into the casing and boiled for about an hour, cooled and the puddings were divided amongst the neighbours.The pig was so palatable that the famous gastronomic writer Grimod de la Reyniere once claimed that the only piece you couldn’t eat was the “oink”. Sharkey remembers her father remarking that had they been able to catch the squeak they would have made tin whistles out of it! No part went to waste; the blood and offal were used, the trotters were known as crubeens (from crúb, hoof), and were boiled and eaten with cabbage. In Galway the knee joint was popular and known as the glúiníns (from glún, knee). The head was roasted whole or often boiled and pressed and prepared as Brawn. The chitterlings (small intestines) were meticulously prepared by continuous washing in cool water and the picking out of undigested food and faeces. Chitterlings were once a popular bar food in Dublin. Pig hair was used for paintbrushes and the bladder was occasionally inflated, using a goose quill, to be used as a football by the children. Meindertsma (2007) provides a pictorial review of the vast array of products derived from a single pig. These range from ammunition and porcelain to chewing gum.From around the mid-eighteenth century, commercial salting of pork and bacon grew rapidly in Ireland. 1820 saw Henry Denny begin operation in Waterford where he both developed and patented several production techniques for bacon. Bacon curing became a very important industry in Munster culminating in the setting up of four large factories. Irish bacon was the brand leader and the Irish companies exported their expertise. Denny set up a plant in Denmark in 1894 and introduced the Irish techniques to the Danish industry, while O’Mara’s set up bacon curing facilities in Russia in 1891 (Cowan and Sexton). Ireland developed an extensive export trade in bacon to England, and hams were delivered to markets in Paris, India, North and South America. The “sandwich method” of curing, or “dry cure”, was used up until 1862 when the method of injecting strong brine into the meat by means of a pickling pump was adopted by Irish bacon-curers. 1887 saw the formation of the Bacon Curers’ Pig Improvement Association and they managed to introduce a new breed, the Large White Ulster into most regions by the turn of the century. This breed was suitable for the production of “Wiltshire” bacon. Cork, Waterford Dublin and Belfast were important centres for bacon but it was Limerick that dominated the industry and a Department of Agriculture document from 1902 suggests that the famous “Limerick cure” may have originated by chance:1880 […] Limerick producers were short of money […] they produced what was considered meat in a half-cured condition. The unintentional cure proved extremely popular and others followed suit. By the turn of the century the mild cure procedure was brought to such perfection that meat could [… be] sent to tropical climates for consumption within a reasonable time (Cowan and Sexton).Failure to modernise led to the decline of bacon production in Limerick in the 1960s and all four factories closed down. The Irish pig market was protected prior to joining the European Union. There were no imports, and exports were subsidised by the Pigs and Bacon Commission. The Department of Agriculture started pig testing in the early 1960s and imported breeds from the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. The two main breeds were Large White and Landrace. Most farms kept pigs before joining the EU but after 1972, farmers were encouraged to rationalise and specialise. Grants were made available for facilities that would keep 3,000 pigs and these grants kick started the development of large units.Pig keeping and production were not only rural occupations; Irish towns and cities also had their fair share. Pigs could easily be kept on swill from hotels, restaurants, not to mention the by-product and leftovers of the brewing and baking industries. Ed Hick, a fourth generation pork butcher from south County Dublin, recalls buying pigs from a local coal man and bus driver and other locals for whom it was a tradition to keep pigs on the side. They would keep some six or eight pigs at a time and feed them on swill collected locally. Legislation concerning the feeding of swill introduced in 1985 (S.I.153) and an amendment in 1987 (S.I.133) required all swill to be heat-treated and resulted in most small operators going out of business. Other EU directives led to the shutting down of thousands of slaughterhouses across Europe. Small producers like Hick who slaughtered at most 25 pigs a week in their family slaughterhouse, states that it was not any one rule but a series of them that forced them to close. It was not uncommon for three inspectors, a veterinarian, a meat inspector and a hygiene inspector, to supervise himself and his brother at work. Ed Hick describes the situation thus; “if we had taken them on in a game of football, we would have lost! We were seen as a huge waste of veterinary time and manpower”.Sausages and rashers have long been popular in Dublin and are the main ingredients in the city’s most famous dish “Dublin Coddle.” Coddle is similar to an Irish stew except that it uses pork rashers and sausage instead of lamb. It was, traditionally, a Saturday night dish when the men came home from the public houses. Terry Fagan has a book on Dublin Folklore called Monto: Murder, Madams and Black Coddle. The black coddle resulted from soot falling down the chimney into the cauldron. James Joyce describes Denny’s sausages with relish in Ulysses, and like many other Irish emigrants, he would welcome visitors from home only if they brought Irish sausages and Irish whiskey with them. Even today, every family has its favourite brand of sausages: Byrne’s, Olhausens, Granby’s, Hafner’s, Denny’s Gold Medal, Kearns and Superquinn are among the most popular. Ironically the same James Joyce, who put Dublin pork kidneys on the world table in Ulysses, was later to call his native Ireland “the old sow that eats her own farrow” (184-5).The last thirty years have seen a concerted effort to breed pigs that have less fat content and leaner meat. There are no pure breeds of Landrace or Large White in production today for they have been crossbred for litter size, fat content and leanness (Tuite). Many experts feel that they have become too lean, to the detriment of flavour and that the meat can tend to split when cooked. Pig production is now a complicated science and tighter margins have led to only large-scale operations being financially viable (Whittemore). The average size of herd has grown from 29 animals in 1973, to 846 animals in 1997, and the highest numbers are found in counties Cork and Cavan (Lafferty et al.). The main players in today’s pig production/processing are the large Irish Agribusiness Multinationals Glanbia, Kerry Foods and Dairygold. Tuite (2002) expressed worries among the industry that there may be no pig production in Ireland in twenty years time, with production moving to Eastern Europe where feed and labour are cheaper. When it comes to traceability, in the light of the Foot and Mouth, BSE and Dioxin scares, many feel that things were much better in the old days, when butchers like Ed Hick slaughtered animals that were reared locally and then sold them back to local consumers. Hick has recently killed pigs for friends who have begun keeping them for home consumption. This slaughtering remains legal as long as the meat is not offered for sale.Although bacon and cabbage, and the full Irish breakfast with rashers, sausages and puddings, are considered to be some of Ireland’s most well known traditional dishes, there has been a growth in modern interpretations of traditional pork and bacon dishes in the repertoires of the seemingly ever growing number of talented Irish chefs. Michael Clifford popularised Clonakilty Black Pudding as a starter in his Cork restaurant Clifford’s in the late 1980s, and its use has become widespread since, as a starter or main course often partnered with either caramelised apples or red onion marmalade. Crubeens (pigs trotters) have been modernised “a la Pierre Kaufman” by a number of Irish chefs, who bone them out and stuff them with sweetbreads. Kevin Thornton, the first Irish chef to be awarded two Michelin stars, has roasted suckling pig as one of his signature dishes. Richard Corrigan is keeping the Irish flag flying in London in his Michelin starred Soho restaurant, Lindsay House, where traditional pork and bacon dishes from his childhood are creatively re-interpreted with simplicity and taste.Pork, ham and bacon are, without doubt, the most traditional of all Irish foods, featuring in the diet since prehistoric times. Although these meats remain the most consumed per capita in post “Celtic Tiger” Ireland, there are a number of threats facing the country’s pig industry. Large-scale indoor production necessitates the use of antibiotics. European legislation and economic factors have contributed in the demise of the traditional art of pork butchery. Scientific advancements have resulted in leaner low-fat pigs, many argue, to the detriment of flavour. Alas, all is not lost. There is a growth in consumer demand for quality local food, and some producers like J. Hick & Sons, and Prue & David Rudd and Family are leading the way. The Rudds process and distribute branded antibiotic-free pig related products with the mission of “re-inventing the tastes of bygone days with the quality of modern day standards”. Few could argue with the late Irish writer John B. Keane (72): “When this kind of bacon is boiling with its old colleague, white cabbage, there is a gurgle from the pot that would tear the heart out of any hungry man”.ReferencesCowan, Cathal and Regina Sexton. Ireland's Traditional Foods: An Exploration of Irish Local & Typical Foods & Drinks. Dublin: Teagasc, 1997.C.S.O. Central Statistics Office. Figures on per capita meat consumption for 2009, 2010. Ireland. http://www.cso.ie.Fitzgerald, Oisin. "The Irish 'Greyhound' Pig: an extinct indigenous breed of Pig." History Ireland13.4 (2005): 20-23.Gantz, Jeffrey Early Irish Myths and Sagas. New York: Penguin, 1981.Harris, Marvin. "The Abominable Pig." Food and Culture: A Reader. Eds. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik. New York: Routledge, 1997. 67-79.Hick, Edward. Personal Communication with master butcher Ed Hick. 15 Apr. 2002.Hick, Edward. Personal Communication concerning pig killing. 5 Sep. 2010.Jackson, K. H. Ed. Aislinge Meic Con Glinne, Dublin: Institute of Advanced Studies, 1990.Joyce, James. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, London: Granada, 1977.Keane, John B. Strong Tea. Cork: Mercier Press, 1963.Kinsella, Thomas. The Táin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.Lafferty, S., Commins, P. and Walsh, J. A. Irish Agriculture in Transition: A Census Atlas of Agriculture in the Republic of Ireland. Dublin: Teagasc, 1999.Mac Con Iomaire, Liam. Ireland of the Proverb. Dublin: Town House, 1988.Mac Con Iomaire, Máirtín and Pádraic Óg Gallagher. "The Potato in Irish Cuisine and Culture."Journal of Culinary Science and Technology 7.2-3 (2009): 1-16.Mahon, Bríd. Land of Milk and Honey: The Story of Traditional Irish Food and Drink. Cork:Mercier, 1998.Meindertsma, Christien. PIG 05049 2007. 10 Aug. 2010 http://www.christienmeindertsma.com.Ó Conaill, Seán. Seán Ó Conaill's Book. Bailie Átha Cliath: Bhéaloideas Éireann, 1981.Sexton, Regina. A Little History of Irish Food. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998.Sharkey, Olive. Old Days Old Ways: An Illustrated Folk History of Ireland. Dublin: The O'Brien Press, 1985.S.I. 153, 1985 (Irish Legislation) http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1985/en/si/0153.htmlS.I. 133, 1987 (Irish Legislation) http://www.irishstatuebook.ie/1987/en/si/0133.htmlTuite, Pat. Personal Communication with Pat Tuite, Chief Pig Advisor, Teagasc. 3 May 2002.Whittemore, Colin T. and Ilias Kyriazakis. Whitmore's Science and Practice of Pig Production 3rdEdition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

Introduction: Artist Villages in Beijing Many of the most renowned sites of Beijing are found in the inner-city districts of Dongcheng and Xicheng: for instance, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Lama Temple, the National Theatre, the Central Opera Academy, the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower, the Imperial College, and the Confucius Temple. However, in the past decade a new attraction has been added to the visitor “must-see” list in Beijing. The 798 Art District originated as an artist village within abandoned factory buildings at Dashanzi, right between the city’s Central Business District and the open outer rural space on Beijing’s north-east. It is arguably the most striking symbol of China’s contemporary art scene. The history of the 798 Art District is by now well known (Keane), so this paper will provide a short summary of its evolution. Of more concern is the relationship between the urban fringe and what Howard Becker has called “art worlds.” By art worlds, Becker refers to the multitude of agents that contribute to a final work of art: for instance, people who provide canvasses, frames, and art supplies; critics and intermediaries; and the people who run exhibition services. To the art-world list in Beijing we need to add government officials and developers. To date there are more than 100 artist communities or villages in Beijing; almost all are located in the city’s outskirts. In particular, a high-powered art centre outside the city of Beijing has recently established a global reputation. Songzhuang is situated in outer Tongzhou District, some 30 kilometres east of Tiananmen Square. The Beijing Municipal Government officially classifies Songzhuang as the Capital Art District (CAD) or “the Songzhuang Original Art Cluster.” The important difference between 798 and Songzhuang is that, whereas the former has become a centre for retail and art galleries, Songzhuang operates as an arts production centre for experimental art, with less focus on commercial art. The destiny of the artistic communities is closely related to urban planning policies that either try to shut them down or protect them. In this paper I will take a close look at three artist villages: Yuanmingyuan, 798, and Songzhuang. In tracing the evolution of the three artist villages, I will shed some light on artists’ lives in city fringes. I argue that these outer districts provide creative industries with a new opportunity for development. This is counter to the conventional wisdom that central urban areas are the ideal locality for creative industries. Accordingly, this argument needs to be qualified: some types of creative work are more suitable to rural and undeveloped areas. The visual art “industry” is one of these. Inner and Outer Worlds Urban historians contend that innovation is more likely to happen in inner urban areas because of intensive interactions between people (Jacobs). City life has been associated with the development of creative industries and economic benefits brought about by the interaction of creative classes. In short, the argument is that cities, or, more specifically, urban areas are primary economic entities (Montgomery) whereas outer suburbs are uncreative and dull (Florida, "Cities"). The conventional wisdom is that talented creative people are attracted to the creative milieu in cities: universities, book shops, cafes, museums, theatres etc. These are both the hard and the soft infrastructure of modern cities. They illustrate diversified built forms, lifestyles and experiences (Lorenzen and Frederiksen; Florida, Rise; Landry; Montgomery; Leadbeater and Oakley). The assumption that inner-city density is the cradle of creative industries has encountered critique. Empirical studies in Australia have shown that creative occupations are found in relatively high densities in urban fringes. The point made in several studies is that suburbia has been neglected by scholars and policy makers and may have potential for future development (Gibson and Brennan-Horley; Commission; Collis, Felton, and Graham). Moreover, some have argued that the practice of constructing inner city enclaves may be leading to homogenized and prescriptive geographies (Collis, Felton, and Graham; Kotkin). As Jane Jacobs has indicated, it is not only density of interactions but diversity that attracts and accommodates economic growth in cities. However, the spatiality of creative industries varies across different sectors. For example, media companies and advertising agencies are more likely to be found in the inner city, whereas most visual artists prefer working in the comparatively quiet and loosely-structured outskirts. Nevertheless, the logic embodied in thinking around the distinctions between “urbanism” and “suburbanism” pays little attention to this issue, although both schools acknowledge the causal relationship between locality and creativity. According to Drake, empirical evidence shows that the function of locality is not only about encouraging interactions between SMEs (small to medium enterprises) within clusters which can generate creativity, but also a catalyst for individual creativity (Drake). Therefore for policy makers in China, the question here is how to plan or prepare a better space to accommodate creative professionals’ needs in different sectors while making the master plan. This question is particularly urgent to the Chinese government, which is undertaking a massive urbanization transition throughout the country. In placing a lens on Beijing, it is important to note the distinctive features of its politics, forms of social structure, and climate. As Zhu has described it, Beijing has spread in a symmetrical structure. The reasons have much to do with ancient history. According to Zhu, the city which was planned in the era of Genghis Khan was constituted by four layers or enclosures, with the emperor at the centre, surrounded by the gentry and other populations distributed outwards according to wealth, status, and occupation. The outer layer accommodated many lower social classes, including itinerant artists, musicians, and merchants. This ”outer city” combined with open rural space. The system of enclosures is carried on in today’s city planning of Beijing. Nowadays Beijing is most commonly described by its ring roads (Mars and Hornsby). However, despite the existing structure, new approaches to urban policy have resulted in a great deal of flux. The emergence of new landscapes such as semi-urbanized villages, rural urban syndicates (chengxiang jiehebu), and villages-within-cities (Mars and Hornsby 290) illustrate this flux. These new types of landscapes, which don’t correspond to the suburban concept that we find in the US or Australia, serve to represent and mediate the urban-rural relationship in China. The outer villages also reflect an old tradition of “recluse” (yin shi), which since the Wei and Jin Dynasties allowed intellectuals to withdraw themselves from the temporal world of the city and live freely in the mountains. The Lost Artistic Utopia: Yuanmingyuan Artist Village Yuanmingyuan, also known as the Ming Dynasty summer palace, is located in Haidian District in the north-west of Beijing. Haidian has transformed from an outer district of Beijing into one of its flourishing urban districts since the mid-1980s. Haidian’s success is largely due to the electronics industry which developed from spin-offs from Peking University, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the 1980s. This led to the rapid emergence of Zhongguancun, sometimes referred to as China’s Silicon Valley. However there is another side of Haidian’s transformation. As the first graduates came out of Chinese Academies of the Arts following the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), creative lifestyles became available. Some people quit jobs at state-owned institutions and chose to go freelance, which was unimaginable in China under the former regime of Mao Zedong. By 1990, the earliest “artist village” emerged around the Yuanmingyuan accommodating artists from around China. The first site was Fuyuanmen village. Artists living and working there proudly called their village “West Village” in China, comparing it to the Greenwich Village in New York. At that time they were labelled as “vagabonds” (mangliu) since they had no family in Beijing, and no stable job or income. Despite financial difficulties, the Yuanmingyuan artist village was a haven for artists. They were able to enjoy a liberating and vigorous environment by being close to the top universities in Beijing[1]. Access to ideas was limited in China at that time so this proximity was a key ingredient. According to an interview by He Lu, the Yuanmingyuan artist village gave artists a sense of belonging which went far beyond geographic identification as a marginal group unwelcomed by conservative urban society. Many issues arose along with the growth of the artist village. The non-traditional lifestyle and look of these artists were deemed abnormal by many of the general public; the way of their expression and behaviour was too extreme to be accepted by the mainstream in what was ultimately a political district; they were a headache for local police who saw them as troublemakers; moreover, their contact with the western world was a sensitive issue for the government at that time. Suddenly, the village was closed by the government in 1993. Although the Yuanmingyuan artist village existed for only a few years, it is of significance in China’s contemporary art history. It is the birth place of the cynical realism movement as well as the genesis of Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Mingjun, now among the most successful Chinese contemporary artists in global art market. The Starting Point of Art Industry: 798 and Songzhuang After the Yuanmingyuan artist village was shut down in 1993, artists moved to two locations in the east of Beijing to escape from the government and embrace the free space they longed for. One was 798, an abandoned electronic switching factory in Beijing’s north-east urban fringe area; the other was Songzhuang in Tongzhou District, a further twenty kilometres east. Both of these sites would be included in the first ten official creative clusters by Beijing municipal government in 2006. But instead of simply being substitutes for the Yuanmingyuan artist village, both have developed their own cultures, functioning and influencing artists’ lives in different ways. Songzhuang is located in Tongzhou which is an outer district in Beijing’s east. Songzhuang was initially a rural location; its livelihood was agriculture and industry. Just before the closing down of the Yuanmingyuan village, several artists including Fang Lijun moved to this remote quiet village. Through word of mouth, more artists followed their steps. There are about four thousand registered artists currently living in Songzhuang now; it is already the biggest visual art community in Beijing. An artistic milieu and a local sense of place have grown with the increasing number of artists. The local district government invests in building impressive exhibition spaces and promoting art in order to bring in more tourists, investors and artists. Compared with Songzhuang, 798 enjoys a favourable location along the airport expressway, between the capital airport and the CBD of Beijing. The unused electronics plant was initially rented as classrooms by the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s. Then several artists moved their studios and workshops to the area upon eviction from the Yuanmingyuan village. Until 2002 the site was just a space to rent cheap work space, a factor that has stimulated many art districts globally (Zukin). From that time the resident artists began to plan how to establish a contemporary art district in China. Led by Huang Rui, a leading visual artist, the “798 collective” launched arts events and festivals, notably a “rebuilding 798” project of 2003. More galleries, cafés, bars, and restaurants began to set up, culminating in a management takeover by the Chaoyang District government with the Seven Stars Group[2] prior to the Beijing Olympics. The area now provides massive tax revenue to the local and national government. Nonetheless, both 798 and Songzhuang face problems which reflect the conflict between artists’ attachment to fringe areas and the government’s urbanization approach. 798 can hardly be called an artist production village now due to the local government’s determination to exploit cultural tourism. Over 50 percent of enterprises and people working in 798 now identify 798 as a tourism area rather than an art or “creative” cluster (Liu). Heavy commercialization has greatly disappointed many leading artists. The price for renting space has gone beyond the affordability of artists, and many have chosen to leave. In Songzhuang, the story is similar. In addition to rising prices, a legal dispute between artists and local residents regarding land property rights in 2008 drove some artists out of Songzhuang because they didn’t feel it was stable anymore (Smith). The district’s future as a centre of original art runs up against the aspirations of local officials for more tax revenue and tourist dollars. In the Songzhuang Cultural Creative Industries Cluster Design Plan (cited in Yang), which was developed by J.A.O Design International Architects and Planners Limited and sponsored by the Songzhuang local government in 2007, Songzhuang is designed as an “arts capital incorporated with culture, commerce and tourism.” The down side of this aspiration is that more museums, galleries, shopping centres, hotels, and recreation infrastructure will inevitably be developed in order to capitalise on Songzhuang’s global reputation. Concluding Reflections In reflecting on the recent history of artist villages in Beijing, we might conclude that rural locations are not only a cheap place for artists to live but also a space to showcase their works. More importantly, the relation of artists and outlying district has evolved into a symbiotic relationship. They interact and grow together. The existence of artists transforms the locale and the locale in turn reinforces the identity of artists. In Yuanmingyuan the artists appreciated the old “recluse” tradition and therefore sought spiritual liberation after decades of suppression. The outlying location symbolized freedom to them and provided distance from the world of noisy interaction. But isolation of artists from the local community and the associated constant conflict with local villagers deepened estrangement; these events brought about the end of the dream. In contrast, at 798 and Songzhuang, artists not only regarded the place as their worksite but also engaged with the local community. They communicated with local people and co-developed projects to transform the local landscape. Local communities changed; they started to learn about the artistic world while gaining economic benefits in many ways, such as house renting, running small grocery stores, providing art supplies and even modelling. Their participation into the “art worlds” (Becker) contributed to a changing cultural environment, in turn strengthening the brand of these artist villages. In many regards there were positive externalities for both artists and the district, although as I mentioned in relation to Songzhuang, tensions about land use have never completely been resolved. Today, the fine arts in China have gone far beyond the traditional modes of classics, aesthetics, liberation or rebellion. Art is also a business which requires the access to the material world in order to produce incomes and make profits. It appears that many contemporary artists are not part of a movement of rebellion (except several artists, such as Ai Weiwei), adopting the pure spirit of art as their life-time mission, as in the Yuanmingyuan artist village. They still long for recognition, but they are also concerned with success and producing a livelihood. The boundary between inner urban and outer urban areas is not as significant to them as it once was for artists from a former period. While many artists enjoy the quiet and space of the fringe and rural areas to work; they also require urban space to exhibit their works and earn money. This factor explains the recent emergence of Caochangdi and other artist villages in the neighbouring area around the 798. These latest artist villages in the urban fringe still have open and peaceful spaces and can be accessed easily due to convenient transportation. Unfortunately, the coalition of business and government leads to rapid commercialization of place which is not aligned with the basic need of artists, which is not only a free or affordable place but also a space for creativity. As mentioned above, 798 is now so commercialized that it is too crowded and expensive for artists due to the government’s overdevelopment; whereas the government’s original intention was to facilitate the development of 798. Furthermore, although artists are a key stakeholder in the government’s agenda for visual art industry, it is always the government’s call when artists’ attachment to rural space comes into conflict with Beijing government’s urbanization plan. Hence the government decides which artist villages should be sacrificed to give way to urban development and which direction the reserved artist villages or art clusters should be developed. The logic of government policy causes an absolute distinction between cities and outlying districts. And the government’s enthusiasm for “urbanization” leads to urbanized artist villages, such as the 798. A vicious circle is formed: the government continuously attempts to have selected artist villages commercialized and transformed into urbanized or quasi-urbanized area and closes other artist villages. One of the outcomes of this policy is that in the government created creative clusters, many artists do not stay, and move away into rural and outlying areas because they prefer to work in non-urban spaces. To resolve this dilemma, greater attention is required to understand artists needs and ways to combine urban convenience and rural tranquillity into their development plans. This may be a bridge too far, however. Reference Becker, Howard Saul. Art Worlds. 25th anniversary, updated and expanded ed. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2008. Collis, Christy, Emma Felton, and Phil Graham. "Beyond the Inner City: Real and Imagined Places in Creative Place Policy and Practice." The Information Society: An International Journal 26.2 (2010): 104–12. Commission, Outer London. 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