In September 2011, Lijiang ancient town introduced a wireless voice tour guide. The guide is domestically advanced. The protection administration of Lijiang will lease 1,000 wireless guides at the tourist service center at the entrance to the ancient town.

"It is hard to find the way to the scenic spots in the ancient town, because of the unique layout. Now, tourists may rent wireless voice tour guides, which will provide tourists with barrier-free sightseeing," said a staff of the ancient town administration.

The guide is a little larger than a mobile phone, and resembles a mini-tablet PC. It contains information on 280 scenic spots and folk customs of Lijiang.

The guide adopts Aigo digital navigator, with 8G internal memory, 4-inch TFT high definition liquid crystal touch screen. It is able to automatically identify scenic spot sites, and play videos. The guide has a built-in loudspeaker, and can be connected to stereo headphone. It is powered by a lithium battery to continually operate for eight hours.

The navigation is supported with 10 languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Arabian and Portuguese), spoken by native speakers. The wireless communication technology is applied for accurate positioning, within 100 meters. At the hot spots, the software will be stimulated to play audio narrations automatically. Tourists may also choose to manually play video programs.

So far, the ancient town has set up 282 hot spots. The audio services cover all the scenic zones. In addition to multi-language automatic tour guide, the facility is functioned to direct tourists to the service center, toilets, hospital and post office. What is more, the noises and interference can be jammed to ensure the guidance.

Edited by Fu Bo and Tania Lee