On August 27th, the State Council Information Office held a news conference of a society of moderate prosperity in all aspects enhanced by rural tourism. Hu Heping, minister of culture and tourism, said in the conference that rural tourism development not only let rural residents benefit form tourism revenue, but also enabled them to become tourism practitioners. Thanks to this financial resource, they were able to visit other places as tourists. Villages became tourist destinations of guests from everywhere as well as customer sources. The promotion of mass tourism required us to stick to the principles of tourism for people and tourism enriching people as well as let tourism be a part of a society of moderate prosperity and a necessity of happy life.
Hu Heping said that many villages situated in remote places with poor transportation, but they boosted scenic beauty, amazing ecology and rich cultural resource. They were in areas exposed to mountains and waters where could remained people of their emotional connection with their hometown. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism pushed the combination of rural tourism with rural revitalization and beautiful village construction and cultivated a series of rural tourism destination with beautiful ecology, production and life. Nationwide, 100 key towns (villages) for rural tourism and 1199 key villages for rural tourism were elected. In 2019, 3.09 billion tourist went to villages for travel, accounting for half of domestic tourism.
“Rural tourism enables farmers to be lifted out of poverty and become rich without leaving their home town”, introduced by Hu Heping. He also said that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism had been working with 11 institutes, including the National Development and Reform Commission, to implement the poverty alleviation project with rural tourism. They created modes of “villages-included scenic areas”, “cooperative+rural household” and so on, all of which helped 22.6 thousand registered poverty-stricken villages to be lifted out of poverty. Examples included Sibadong village in Hunan province, Huamao village in Guizhou province, Desheng Village in Hebei province, Shenshan Village in Jiangxi province and so on, all of which were national key villages for rural tourism transformed form poverty-stricken villages in the past. A villager form a forest area of Arshaan Mountain in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region wrote a couplet meaning “dropping axe to be a tour guide leaves no worry for a moderate prosperous life”, a vivid interpretation for poverty alleviation through tourism. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism organized innovative rural activities; established more than 300 outstanding routes, including trips for custom as well as poetic and countryside beauty, the most beautiful ecological entertainment trip and establish loop line of “three regions and three prefectures” with tourism train and online and offline promotion, so as to enable villages to be places for people to experience their connection to hometown and a financial resource for people to be lifted out of poverty and to become rich.
The decisive factor of a moderately prosperous society was the living standard of rural residents. “During our research in villages, some people said vividly that ‘What kind of life can be described as moderately prosperous? It’s the kind of life that we can eat meat, have a roof over head and extra money for trips.’”, said Hu Heping. He also said farmers’ developing and going out for tourism enriched their material and spiritual life, so their were more willing to stay and revitalize rural areas, which was exactly the advantage of tourism as a happy and comprehensive industry.
Hu Heping said that the next step of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism was to carry out improvement projects of rural art and dining with brand as a lead and with supporting projects including national key towns and villages for rural tourism, quality routes for rural tourism, outstanding rural homestay and integrated development demonstration area of rural tourism, so as to promote the integrated development of rural tourism and supporting industries; to enable rural tourism to be the origin of villagers’ financial resource and to make “beautiful village” an amazing stroke on the magnificent painting of the “beautiful China”.