Q1: Many people in China have heard about Ancient Greek, Roman and Arab civilizations. What is less well known is that there are many well-preserved Roman ruins in Jordan, which is praised as “Roman beyond Rome”. This information gap is both an opportunity and a challenge for Jordan to promote tourism overseas. Could you share with us Jordan’s visions for expanding the tourism market in China?

Ambassador Hussam Al Husseini:

Well thank you so much for inviting me to this interview, and thank you so much for these interests in my country, Jordan.

As you well aware, Jordan lies in the heart of the world. It was the crossroad of civilizations as well. In fact, Jordan connects three continents: Europe, Africa and Asia, making it a very strategic location through the whole history. And that’s why Greek empires in the old days, they always looked for this particular area, since this particular location was very strategic for their expansion and for their empire showing off their power and greatness. So that’s why Jordan has witnessed and has seen a lot of civilizations crossing Atlantis through the history.

Of course, the original nation, the Arabic nation has been there in Jordan for thousands of years. And there are a number of Greek kingdoms and Arab states that have, through the history, established themselves in Jordan. Like the Greek Nabataean Kingdom, almost 2,400 years ago, was one of the richest and strongest and very glamorous kingdoms of the history. That’s why, being in that very important location and very strategic location, and richest, the Roman Empire’s expansion was very much centered on conquering this kingdom. They spent a quite very heavy investment to conquer Jordan at that time. Because of the importance of the location, Jordan became, during the Roman Empire, a very important Roman center of power and of the civilization as well.

For example, more than 2,000 years ago, during those time of expansion of Roman, or the Byzantine part of the Roman Empire, they established in this particular area in the middle east ten of the most important cities of the Roman Empire at that time, and they used to call them the Decapolis. Deca from the word ten in the Latin. So these Decapolis were the most important cities of the Roman Empire at that time in this region. My country Jordan hosts six of these ten Decapolis. One of the biggest one, for example, is Jerash. Jerash is the most complete city in Roman city outside Italy. So if you go outside of Italy, you will see that there are plenty of ruins in many places in east Europe, in the middle east and so on where the Roman Empire expanded and you will see ruins of all the cities as they were established there. But the most complete city outside Italy is in Jordan.

So if you look at this archeological site of Jordan, you will see it is a mix of two great civilizations at that time, the Arabic civilization and the Roman civilization. That provided a very rich cultural and historical deeps for the country in Jordan, and, of course, this added a beautiful flavor to tourism. So as tourists go into Jordan, they will have this sense of great history, long history and richness of these two civilizations in that area. And of course, from that area, too many things and too many events of history happened coming from that particular area. And Jordan became the center of power at that time.

Nowadays, given the small size of Jordan, one of the unique things is that once a tourist goes to Jordan, he would find that in a very short beautiful time like five or six or seven days, he can travel through the history from the Arabic civilization, to the Roman civilization, to the Islamic civilization. All of these get together, and then you can come up to this modern state of Jordan.

You would see these combination of all of rich history, development, investment and culture that make the visit to Jordan worthwhile, and that make tourists feel that it was really worth it to come and spend this week in Jordan and to see this big piece of history in just one visit like this. And of course, in addition to that, you will see there are many different other aspects of Jordan, like the leisure time at Dead Sea, at Aqaba, and even the magnificent and mystic characters of desert in the south of Jordan where you have Wadi Rum, the rocky desert area that resembles to Mars and so on. The combination of many beautiful things that would make a visit to Jordan worthwhile and make it an excellent opportunity to enrich soul, body as well as a pleasure in one week or so in Jordan.

Q2: In both China and Jordan, ancient architectural sites are engraved with the splendor of thousands of years of history. In recent years, virtual projects such as China’s “Digital Dunhuang” have been developed, allowing visitors who cannot be there to enjoy a glimpse of the millennium. This has also greatly contributed to heritage conservation and relevant academic research. Are there any similar digital projects or noteworthy experiences of heritage conservation in Jordan?

Ambassador Hussam Al Husseini:

Jordan has always been abound of attraction and source of interest to many scholars, researchers, archeologists and historians, as I said because of the very deep and rich history.

As I said earlier, there are archeological sites and historical sites from the time of Roman, Arabic civilization and Islamic civilization, and also there is a part of the Holy Land as well, that is Biblical, relates to the journey of Jesus Christ, Baptism site and Moses as well. All of these added a very rich piece of history that attracted a lot of historians through the history. For example, more than 200 years ago, there was a David Jorbertze, a British scholar and painter who visited all the holy area and he made paintings of all the places in the middle east in the journey that he called the Holy Land Journey, just to document these beautiful places and these beautiful pieces of history into a painting. And of course, after that, when photography was also invented, there has been a number of famous photographers who came to Jordan and who built their own stories through the photographs about Jordan history, Jordan attraction, Jordan tourism as well.

There was recent an American research center called ACOR for international research and heritage research. This center has made a project that combines all these photographs in one digital site. It’s available online. And this project has provided a collection of all of these photographs that have been shot about Jordan through the years especially in the time when there was no digital technology at that time. So the center digitalized these photographs and made this archive of collection.

There is also some other projects in Jordan run by Jordan Tourism or Ministry of Antiquities who try to collect as much as possible all of these documents that could really combined together and try to digitalize as much as possible. And I hope that in the coming years, this would be one of the points of that could be explored further through many sites in Jordan. There are also many other number of centers in Jordan, like the Center of Middle East study in the University of Jordan, who have digital archives of many manuscripts and many pieces of literature as well as history of Jordan and Middle East. And this is a part of American project that is going on digitalizing the history and the heritage of Jordan and the region in general. I would say that there is quite a good number of projects that are undergoing now. Some of them are already like ACOR project on the Internet, some are in the making and maybe the coming days will bring in such an effort.

The new social media now and new communication technologies have provided an unorganized archive of all of these sites on the Internet. You can easily now go to the Internet and google Jordan or any place in Jordan. You will see plenty of photographs, plenty of documents that are voluntarily uploaded on the Internet from the tourists, from scholars on their own. So this unorganized archive that has already been on the spread all over and that’s coming from the interest of people in this deep history and attraction that it brings to them. And of course, there are also organized and government-support projects that are going on in Jordan.

Q3: For today’s various new forms of cultural tourism, how can they be combined with Jordan’s splendid history and civilization to give the ancient city a new lease of life?

Ambassador Hussam Al Husseini:

Thank you so much for this very interesting point. It’s always nice to merge and to join the history, the present and the future.

In anyway we could develop our life and make our life more interesting and more beautiful. I think when you look at countries like Jordan, there are plenty of historical places. These historical places have provided very interesting ideas to engage with the present and with the future. For example, in Jordan, for last 30 and more years, we have what we call Jerash Festival. It is an annual festival that is done every year in summertime. This festival is for culture and art, mainly. This festival has attracted many troupes from all the world, many singers, many artists, many poets, many writers, many sculptors, many scholars and of course many visitors and tourists at the same time, where they can all meet together and exchange knowledge, art, leisure and so on. This became not only a very famous event in Jordan, but also it became a lucky destination and dream destination for many artists, especially from other backgrounds, because it became like a platform for many of them to show their presence. It did, actually, contribute to the popularity of many great Arab artists, different musicians, painters and so on. This kind of festival has brought life to very old ancient cities like Jerash, and it really brought connections of match between the past and the present together to provide a new opportunity for cultural exchange between not only neighboring countries but also from abroad.

Jerash Festival has a tradition of hosting a number of Chinese troupes who participated in different parts in this festival. And they have always been an attractive segment of this festival through the years. Many people come to see this attraction and these beautiful art pieces from China. This is a win-win situation. And now the new technologies are bringing even more possibilities for the event to bring together this combination.

For example, Jordan becomes recently a very important film-making site. Especially places like Petra for example, it has always been a source of interest for many film makers. For example, Indiana Jones was shot in Petra and became a very popular movie, and Petra also becomes very well-known from this movie because of its special attraction. Transformers also did the same in Petra. Wadi Rum, the Mars-like desert surface, has brought so many films in space and life on Mars and other planets as well. These new technologies of movies and film making also have made an excellent use of this heritage and rich old treasures of Jordan and convert them into a beautiful scenery for movies and for attractions. I know that there are many people now wonder whether some of those movies are really shot on Mars or in the space. But when they go to places like Wadi Rum in the south of Jordan, they could see that, wow, it’s really like space without going to space.

These combinations have really made a successful story of how this new development, this new technology have managed to present these treasures of Jordan in a very nice way to as many people as possible.

Q4: With the optimization and adjustment of the management measures and related policies for the movement of Chinese citizens and foreigners, as well as the official revival of outbound group tours for Chinese citizens, the Chinese outbound tourism market is showing a sustained and accelerated recovery. The people of both China and Jordan are looking forward to a return to normal cultural and tourism exchanges between the two sides as soon as possible. What preparations have Jordan made in terms of VISA and entry policies, and how will they facilitate Chinese tourists’ journey in the future?

Ambassador Hussam Al Husseini:

Jordan has been on the tourist destination list of the Chinese for many years. Jordan realizes how much interest that our Chinese friends have in Jordan. We know that Chinese people like to combine as many things as possible when they travel. Many important things like knowledge, awareness, history as well as leisure and pleasure. So what we realize also is that Jordan has plenty of attractions that could really attract Chinese tourists and would be very much interest to come and make all these collections. As I said, in a week or so, you can travel along the country and get a collection of many different things from history, from archeology, from leisure adventure and relaxation. For example, when you go to the Dead Sea where you have this natural, mineral products for the beauty and spa that could really turn your visit into a refreshing and reenergizing experience.

Knowing that there has been recently a lot of development facilitated in travelling to Jordan by our tourist from China, visa, for example. Arrangement has been facilitated. For the Chinese, they can get the visa at any embassy and any consulate worldwide, and they can also get it at the airport, at checkpoints, in any of our international border and without any delay or without any issue.

Jordanian people admire Chinese people. They admire China for many things. First of all, because of its long history of great civilization and its contribution to the humanity. Secondly, because of the recent advancement of China, and the way their developments have took place in history and culture. All have been the source of admiration of our Jordanian people. The third thing is that China is our second largest trading partner, so every aspect of development in China can be reflected in terms of export reaching Jordan. Jordanians are aware very much of this kind of development, this kind of creativity, and this kind of entrepreneurship that is happening in China on the daily basis. Through this big trade volume that we have in China, that’s quite usual admiration and affection for the Chinese people. So Chinese are welcomed in Jordan.

There have been quite a very good number of Jordanians studying Chinese language, learning Chinese language. So it will not be very surprised for many of our Chinese tourists when they are traveling, they will see a Jordanian speaking Chinese, making it helping for those who does not speak English or Arabic about their life or their visit in Jordan. This is also an added value. We hope that in a very near future, we would also have Chinese-speaking guides that would help Chinese tourists as soon as tourism resumes in Jordan.

Jordan recently has lifted old instructions regarded to travel to Jordan, concerning COVID-19. Obviously, there is no quarantine, no any frequent conditions are needed in Jordan, and we also provide a very good facilitation, so there is no need of precautions for Chinese to worry about when they go to Jordan. And there is a plenty of programs are scheduled that is ready for them, prepared for them to make their visit to Jordan not only worthwhile but also enjoyable and memorable.

China is full of wisdom through history, and one of the beautiful wisdom I have learned from your culture is that “one picture is better than one thousand words”, and I would say that “one visit is much better than one thousand pictures.” No matter how much you have seen on the TV about those beautiful places in Jordan, you will always be surprised when you visit Jordan in person, and this is something we are very proud of. I’m not saying this just to promote Jordan, but I’m saying because it’s the reality and this is what the impression of all of visitors who made to Jordan. In many countries and many places, you see many beautiful places through pictures, Internet, TVs and so on, but once you get there, you may feel a little bit disappointed. This is not the case in Jordan. We are so proud that whatever you see on photos, magazines and TVs, when you go to Jordan, you will be impressed and you will see that you didn’t see enough and what you saw through the picture was a little bit of the reality. This impression will always be felt by visitors to Jordan. We can still surprise you no matter how much you have seen about Jordan through other medias, you can still be surprised and you can still be astonished and you can still enjoy a lot of Jordan. Jordan is welcoming our friends from China. Chinese are very welcome in Jordan.

And I would like to say that this is a great civilization that we host in Jordan through the history, and the dialogue between both of our civilization has all been through the history, through the time until up and now, we could see that the future would bring more of these, not only cultural exchange and dialogue, but also many other area’s cooperation in many different areas.

So I would say to all friends across China, you are most welcome to Jordan. You will enjoy everything in Jordan and I promise you that it’s worthwhile and you will not regret it. Thank you.