Hengyang sees booming rural tourism
2024-07-26
Changning boasts picturesque scenery, a long history, and profound culture. It has created tourism brands such as China’s Yinshan, Tashan Yao Township, Shuikoushan Workers’ Movement Exhibition Hall, and Changning Woodblock Painting. A number of new rural tourism products, forms, and entities are emerging.
Tashan Yao Township enters the peak tourism season in summer. At the foot of Tiantang Mountain, on the banks of Xijiang River, the Jiangshang Renjia Homestay Inn of Xijiang Village welcomed guests from all over the country coming here to escape the heat. Jiang Lijun, owner of the homestay inn, is thinking about how to perfectly combine authentic cuisine, unique folk customs, cultural activities, and recreational activities to provide tourists with a more comfortable and rich leisure experience.
“To develop rural tourism, we need to make full use of the resource advantages based on local conditions. Relying on the natural scenery and tea culture of Tashan, the characteristic themed homestay inn has been integrated with tea culture exhibitions, tea and agricultural specialty product sales, and tea picking. Besides, it attracts tourists through the local tea tourism economy and Xijiang’s cool economy. During holidays, our guest rooms are always fully booked, which has driven the sales of local agricultural products such as tea, cured meat, and ciba, with an increase in tourism output value of about 10 million yuan since its opening one year ago,” said Jiang Lijun.
In Hengyang, with rich tourism resources, there are many villages and towns that develop characteristic tourism projects by exploring regional resources according to local conditions. In recent years, Hengyang has introduced policies to support rural tourism, giving priority to the development of rural tourism around cities and scenic spots. More than 200 characteristic scenic spots and rural tourism service areas have sprung up in Hengyang.
Meihua Village in Xidu Town of Hengyang County has developed an integrated agricultural tourism industry project to create a leisure tourism backyard based on its geographical location and natural scenery. In the Meihua Park, there are complete tourist facilities such as the observation tower, a 9D cinema, an ice and snow kingdom, karting, and the rainbow slide. In the agricultural product exhibition hall, fragrant rice, flat rice cakes, and ciba of local brands are favored by tourists.
Liu Zhun, Party secretary of Meihua Village, said that the village has made efforts to develop leisure vacation entities and cultivate village-level public brands of agricultural products. It has created the “Meihua” brand and turned rural areas into scenic spots and agricultural products into tourism products. In 2023, the village achieved the collective economic income of 3.23 million yuan, with the per capita annual income of 32,000 yuan.
“Cultural tourism is an important engine to empower rural development and a vital source of stimulating rural vitality. Rural tourism can improve the life of the general public. Nowadays, rural tourism and leisure agriculture are becoming a new engine for the development of rural economy in Hengyang and a new channel for farmers to increase their income,” said Xie Hong, deputy mayor of Hengyang City.
According to data statistics, as of 2023, there had been 3 national key villages and 1 national key town for rural tourism, 17 provincial-level key villages and 3 provincial-level key towns for tourism, as well as 109 provincial-level star-rated rural tourism service areas in Hengyang City.
As the core area of 800-mile Mount Heng and 800-mile Xiangjiang River, Hengyang City has unique ecological environment, rich cultural heritage, and abundant rural tourism resources.
Wu Jianbo, deputy director of the Hengyang Municipal Bureau of Culture, Tourism, Radio, Television and Sports, said that currently, Hengyang has achieved some phased results in rural tourism, and there is still great development space in the future.
In the next stage, Hengyang City will continue efforts to increase featured products, extend the industrial chain, improve service quality, and develop different types of rural tourism products such as agricultural and forestry ecological sightseeing experience tours, leisure vacation tours, and high-altitude summer health tours.
Meanwhile, the construction of intelligent and information-based rural tourism will be advanced, in a bid to provide more convenient and efficient tourism services for tourists, and enhance the competitiveness and attractiveness of Hengyang’s rural tourism products.
The Rural Cultural Tourism Festival aims to create themed brand events, promote the high-quality development of rural tourism, and assist in rural economic development and rural revitalization. The festival held in Hengyang showcases the achievements of rural cultural and tourism development in Hengyang, and beautiful prospects for future rural development.
