Phnom Penh (FN), Oct. 27 – During your long vacation, do you want to experience a beautiful scenery with mountains and rivers or lie on the beach to enjoy the sunshine or immersively experience the lively ethnic customs? Or you do not want anything but just a “paradise” for relaxation. You can have all of these tourism experiences in Guangxi, China.
In recent years, Guangxi follows the market orientation and tourists’ needs, deepens the reform of the culture and tourism integration system and mechanism, promotes the integration of “cultural tourism+” and “+cultural tourism” industries, and continuously expands the advantages of cultural tourism resources, so as to show a new tourism picture throughout Guangxi, a beautiful place.
Cultural Tourism + Festival: Activate New Driving Forces for Economic Development
From 27 October to 5 November 2023 Guilin Festival will grandly kick off between mountains and rivers in Guilin, Guangxi, and more than 100 activities and performances will be held in turns to ignite the fire of art in this world-class tourist city. Domestic and foreign guests and art enthusiasts will come here to enjoy the beauty of “symbiosis” between nature and art.
At Guilin Festival, not only the dramatic elements of Guilin’s natural scenery, history and humanities are deeply explored and integrated with stage arts to create the dramatic art ecology with Guilin characteristics; but also various potential art categories such as music, fine arts, dance and images are fused into one through “drama+”, so as to stereoscopically show the endless charm and infinite vitality of Guilin, a world-class tourism city through modernized artistic and technical means and cross-regional integration & exchange.
In Guangxi, the cultural tourism and festival are combined in many cases. With “March 3rd of the Zhuang Nationality”, Lusheng and Horse Fighting Festival of Miao Nationality, Duoye Festival of Dong Nationality, Liuzhou Fantastic Stones Festival, Tiandong Mango Festival...From Spring to Winter, from south to north, Guangxi, a place with eight osmanthus trees, has colorful traditional festivals of ethnic minorities and all-embracing festivals with regional characteristics. Some of these festivals have a long history, some have rich national customs, and some have formed a strong industry.
Cao Guangzhe, chairman of Guangxi Society for Culture and Tourism Think Tank, said that after years of cultivation and development, the concept of “cultural tourism + festival” had been widely recognized in Guangxi, increasingly showing the role of building up the momentum and gathering people through festivals, and the festival economy was becoming a new driving force for economic and social development.
Cultural Tourism + Wellness: Build a New Pattern with Industrial Integration
Facing the sea with numerous mountains behind, you can enjoy the double regulation of the sea and mountains in Guangxi. In the late autumn, Fangcheng Port attracted “Migratory Birds” from the far and cold northern China and even from the south of the Yangtze River, Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan to settle down here and enjoy the seaside life. However, with the comprehensive upgrading of medical supporting facilities, the medical wellness and health care & elderly care have been well-guaranteed in this city.
“Cultural Tourism + Wellness” is a world-class tourism card of Guangxi. In recent years, Guangxi has showed new demands for health, elderly care, medical treatment and green, etc. and timely carried out system integration for health care resources and supporting facilities, etc., thus producing 7 new industrial chains such as health care for the elderly, medical health, healthy foods, healthy exercise, health care administration, health tourism, and health & cultural tourism manufacturing.
By integrating the great health resources in the region and striving to arrange the cultural tourism industry projects through “points and lines to planes”, the local government has set up 26 demonstration bases for Chinese medicine health tourism, 22 demonstration bases for combination of medical treatment and endowment with Chinese medicine characteristics and 21 health care and elderly service towns, thus forming an industrial development pattern with complementary advantages, staggered development and balanced distribution.
In Hezhou, with the unique ecological environment resources, the local government has actively developed the great health and cultural tourism industries with “health care” and “longevity” characteristics to speed up the formation of an industrial system integrating ecotourism, hot springs for wellness and leisure wellness and thus provide tourists with diversified wellness experiences.
Bama County, Hechi City, the “Village of Longevity in the World”, have successfully promoted itself for its traditional Chinese medicine and healthy cultural tourism with its greatly potential health care resources. More than 50,000 mu of Zhuang and Yao ethnic medicinal materials have been planted in the whole county, and Bama National Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine has become a leading unit in traditional Chinese medicine, and has characteristic “acupuncture and massage specialties” and “Zhuang medical specialties”, both of which are key specialties of ethnic medicine determined by Guangxi Health Commission, thus driving the development of Chinese medicine treatment concepts and treatment systems at county, township and village levels.
“Green mountains and clear water are equal to mountains of gold and silver”. Over the years, Guangxi has been continuously and persistently making more efforts on high-level protection to promote the integration of ecological protection and urban & rural planning, urban construction, industrial development and people’s lives on the whole while vigorously developing the wellness and tourism industries with its advantages of natural ecology, so as to provide a permanent picture of green mountains, clear water and fresh air in Guangxi.
Cultural Tourism + Village: Add New Vitality for Rural Revitalization
When the night falls, a boy, in the sounds of gongs, drums and suona horns, put on the wedding clothes of Yao nationality prepared by the girl’s family, with a long and narrow veil covering his face, and went to his “girl’s family” in the lively atmosphere created by the wedding team. This is a scene in the “marrying a groom” wedding ceremony, an ancient wedding ceremony of Yaozu Autonomous County, Jinxiu, Laibin City, Guangxi, which attracted lots of tourists to come to experience it during the holidays.
Tang Song, a tourist from Qingyuan, Guangdong, played the role of “groom”. The ‘marrying a groom’ wedding custom was very special, and I am very happy to experience it personally.
Tianqin Zhuang Village, located at Shuilong Countryside, Shanglong Town, Longzhou County, Chongzuo City, Guangxi, i.e. at the Sino-Vietnamese border, shows another picture of border ethnic customs with a small bridge over the flowing stream and beautiful musics. Tianqin of Zhuang Nationality is a unique plucked musical instrument of Zhuang Nationality, Guangxi, and has existed for a thousand years. “The beautiful scenery was in front of our eyes on the way here, and the natural scenery here is very comfortable. Listening to Tianqin music and songs with ethnic characteristics in the village also makes us relaxed.” Lu’s family driving to Chongzuo from another place was very satisfied with this tour in this countryside.
Guangxi has rich rural tourism resources, including colorful rural scenery, secret scenery of hills and waters, intangible cultures and strong folk customs.
In recent years, Guangxi takes the integrated development of primary, secondary and tertiary industries as its path and the creation of rural tourism brand as an effective mean to strengthen the innovation-led promotion of concentrated, high-quality and industrial development of rural tourism and develop international rural tourism destinations, so as to create an “updated” rural tourism and promote rural revitalization in Guangxi.
So far, Guangxi has formulated the Integrated Development Plan for Tourism and Related Industries to innovate the rural tourism development mode, and has input RMB 100 million to create 20 pilot villages with ethnic characteristics and integrated rural tourism development; innovate the marketing means for rural tourism; innovate the cooperation mechanism of Guangdong-Guangxi cultural tourism, and work together to build Hezhou “Agricultural Cultural Tourism Guangdong and Guangxi Integration” Rural Revitalization Demonstration Area and Intangible Cultural Heritage Town, etc.
In this golden week for tourism during the Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays, Guangxi received a total of 53.697 million people, increased by 30.8% compared with that in 2019, and the tourist income reached RMB 48.12 billion (RMB, the same below), increased by 43.2% compared with that in 2019. (By Yang Chen)
=FRESH NEWS
