lol. "let's hope shaolin temple doesn't become a tourist trap..."

That is laughable. It's already a tourist trap and has been one in modern time since Jet Li's movie in '81 revitalized and resparked interest the whole place.

It was pretty quiet there for a long time, but as Gene has said, pretty much any heritage place becomes a tourist trap and the price to get in goes up with that.

Unesco partners with companies and concerns in order to up the cache value of otherwise dilapidated buildings. But it also helps to save some heritage buildings from the wrecking ball and it also gives this status to buildings that are hardly in danger of not being recognized as historically important anyway.