Xuefeng Mountain (Huaihua) Farming Culture and Tourism Festival kicks off
2023-06-08
Farming culture is one of five cultural cards of Hunan Province. As a brilliant “pearl” of the cultural system, Huaihua City boasts rich farming cultural tourism resources at both country level and world level, including Chenxi Farming-reading Culture, Gaomiao ruins, which is the earliest birthplace of paddy farming in the West Hunan area, and the world’s birthplace of hybrid rice Anjiang Town.
Huaihua City has given priority to the promotion of Hunan’s farming cultural card to advance the development of farming culture and tourism brands of Anjiang Farming Culture Tourist Area and Xupu Shanbei Terraced Fields.
This farming culture and tourism themed activity hosted by Huaihua has fully demonstrated its city image, and will help Hunan build a world-class farming culture brand. Huaihua City set the main venue of the activity in Jinshui Village that is near Xupu Shanbei Terraced Fields, which also shows its determination to further develop farming culture and tourism.
Like Shanbei Village, Jinshui Village also has a large area of terraced fields. Through years of development, the characteristic Seven Family Names Yao Culture has been formed in Jinshui Village, which can be traced to the same origin as the Hua Yao Culture of Xupu Village. Additionally, some intangible cultural heritage items there have been inherited for thousands of years until now, like double suona horns, folk songs of Yao people, etc.
As early as 1,500 years ago, there were records of fish farming in paddy fields in Chenxi County. In the Qianlong Period of the Qing Dynasty, the fishes in paddy fields of Chenxi were imperial tributes.
In recent years, Chenxi County has taken the development of paddy fish industry as a key move to increase the efficiency of agriculture, improve the income of farmers and boost rural development. On the basis of traditional paddy farming, the county has actively explored a new comprehensive rice-fish farming model to improve the efficiency, quality safety and ecological environment of agriculture.
Up to now, Chenxi County has raised fish in 158,000 mu (about 10,533.33 hectares) of paddy fields, with an annual average income increase of over 200 million yuan. The Paddy Fish Culture Festival has been successfully held for four times. And Chenxi Paddy Fish has been registered as a national geographical indication agricultural product.
In the process of the transformation and upgrading of the paddy fish industry, Yuan Longping gave careful guidance in industrial development planning and acclaimed the county as “The Hometown of Paddy Fish in China”. The spirit of “one seed changing the world” has been deeply integrated into the lives of Chenxi people.
Chenxi County’s tourist attractions are also charming, like the splendid Luofeng Mountains, cozy Changtianwan Banshan Hot Spring and Chenyang Ancient Town. There is a lot of delicious local food, too. Chenxi Sour Turnip, Stewed Beef and the Yao Tofu are tasty and impressive.
How to facilitate Chenxi’s development based on advantageous resources? “Taking advantage of the festival, we will further dig out, inherit and carry forward the farming culture and Seven Family Names Yao Culture. Efforts will be made to promote the development of Chenxi’s cultural tourism industry and build Chenxi into a world-class farming culture tourist destination in Hunan,” said Xie Jianjun, secretary of the County Committee.
