Agra Castle, a UNESCO world heritage, about 2.5km northwest of Taj Mahal, India.
Competition for Mandarin-speaking tour guides has become intense in
India as more and more Chinese visitors come to the country for business and travel, People's Daily says.
One owner of a travel agency in India said she has to hire a student in Chinese at a local university to host Chinese tourists when she runs out of tour guides. In the past two years, there have been so many Chinese tourists that there is no time to rest, she added.
People who can speak Chinese can make up to US$200 an hour as a tour guide, and are hard to find despite such fees.
India recorded 170,000 tourist visits from China last year. In addition to the increase in numbers, the visitors' average spending and length of stay has also gone up. One reason is the number of people traveling to the country for business who do some sightseeing on the side, said one tour guide.
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced during his visit in China last month that his government will offer electronic identification scans for Chinese travelers.
The tourism market in India and China has great potential for growth, given the two countries' combined population of 2.5 billion people and relatively low country-to-country traffic, the People's Daily report said.
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