With Chinese tourists making some 83 million international trips in 2012 — up from 10 million in 2000, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization — and now often displacing Japanese as the biggest spenders from Asia, wouldn't it be nice if they and others took home from their next trip to Washington something more than a suitcase full of souvenirs and designer goods?
For both American and Asian travelers to the U.S. capital this month, the name Martin Luther King Jr. is likely to be of particular interest as will the statue and surrounding plaza built to honor him in this city of monuments.
King is of course the iconic African-American civil rights leader who fell to an assassin's bullet on April 4, 1968. The late Nobel Peace Prize laureate is back in the news this August as the United States commemorates the 50th anniversary of his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.