Cultural Exchanges of Presenting China to the World-The Most Beautiful China-Global Envoys to China into Qixia of Shangdong
Xixia, located in the Northeast of Shandong province, earned its name according to the poet “The sunrise brings the morning glow shining the top of city wall”. It boasts a long history and splendid culture. Meanwhile, there are a lot of beautiful natural landscapes and rich tourism resources in Qixia, and the coverage of forest accounts for 69.2% of the total. The history of planting apples can be dated back to more than 120 years ago, thus it has received many honors, such as best tourism city, hometown of Chinese literature and national model city for ecology. It is also the home to apples with many titles including top city of apples in China, hometown of apples in China, cultural hometown of apples in China, national model city for harmless apples, national model city for agricultural standardization and top ten city in Chinese fruit industry. It ranks the first in top 20 apple towns and is recommended as the “Capital City of Chinese Apples”. Besides, it boasts many tourist sites, such as Gu Mountain, Mou’s Garden, Yashan National Forest Park, Geological Culture Museum of Odd Stones, Taixu Temple and Aishan Natural Spot characterized by mysterious and unique Aishan spring and famous Qixia apples. The president Xi praised the Qixia apples as “Top Apple of Chinese Nation” when he was visiting Yantai during the Qingdao Summit of SCO in June 2018.
Qixia is national model city for ecology as mountains, rivers, forests, springs and lakes are interwoven with each other. Its coverage of forest accounts for 69.2% of the total, ranking top in Jiaodong region. Meanwhile, it is also the outstanding representative of Jiaodong culture with many famous personages, such as Qiu Chuji, a famed Yuan Taoist guru, Hao Yixing(1757-1825), a naturalist, Mou Ting (1759-1832), a famous scholar, and Mou Zongshan(1909-1995), a modern representative of Neo-Confucian. Ten sets of national and provincial intangible cultural heritages, represented by the eight trigrams drum dance and Tanglang boxing (praying mantis boxing), demonstrate unique farming and folk culture. As a capital of apple in China, Qixia covers a planting area of more than 1.1 million mu with an annual apple output of 2.2 billion kilograms. It has earned 6 first places in terms of planting area, comprehensive services, management, types and quality, the unit area yield and total output as well as business efficiency. Besides, it is the only apple-growing region selected as top ten world-renowned brand of fruit and vegetable industry. Moreover, Qixia is noted for the Best Tourism City. There are two 4A-level scenic spots and four 3A-level resorts including Mou's Manor (home of an eminent landlord in Qixia city) and Taixu Palace (Taoist architecture in memory of Qiu Chuji, a famed Taoist guru).
Qixia, as a key node city of the Belt and Road, features multiple strategic opportunities and increasingly solid foundation for development. It is the center of China-Japan-Korea free trade zone, one of three cores of the replacement of the old drivers of growth in Shandong province. Many national parks including Taiwan startup parks for farmers, modern agriculture industrial parks and agricultural science and technology parks were built within Qixia. When entering into the new era, Qixia has adopted the vision that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets, and taken the supply-side structural reform as the main task. By doing so, it aims to build a new green city with Jiaodong characteristics, and develop modern green economy supported by seven leading industries comprising of services for all ages, apple, new energy and new materials, high-end equipment manufacturing, electronic information and general aviation. Besides, Qixia remains committed to pursuing high-quality economic development so as to create a favorable environment where people live and work in contentment. In 2017, the revenue in the general public budgets grew by 18.3%, higher than Yantai by 11.9% and ranking first among other counties and cities. The real outward foreign direct investment, imports and exports of foreign trade as well as exports increased by 24.6%, 22.8% and 26.2% respectively, winning the first place in Yantai municipality.