The 2023 Hunan (Summer) Rural Cultural Tourism Festival and Hunan Summer “Village Carnival” Demonstration Activity kicked off in Aikou Village, Jishou City, Xiangxi Prefecture on the evening of June 3.
On the site, Xiangxi promoted six characteristic tour routes with the theme of “a cool summer in mysterious Xiangxi”, including a colorful photograph tour, a dreamy night tour, a summer vacation tour, a distinctive study tour, a self-drive and camping tour, and a special forces-style tour.
After the opening ceremony, the Hunan Summer “Village Carnival” Demonstration Activity was held with the theme of tea culture, to vividly demonstrate the fruitful achievements of rural vitalization and the happy life of the villagers in Xiangxi Prefecture. It included four chapters, namely the source of tea, the meaning of tea, the love of tea and the song of tea.
In the following two days, there will be five main activities. First, well-known experts, scholars, and industry elites will have a talk about the beautiful future of rural tourism at the seminar on Hunan rural culture and tourism empowering rural vitalization.
And then, an achievement exhibition on Hunan Rural Cultural Tourism Festival will display the topics, the content, the features and the achievements of 26 rural cultural tourism festivals. Besides, a folk custom and intangible culture heritage show of Xiangxi Prefecture will demonstrate the inheritance, protection and utilization of intangible culture heritage of Xiangxi Prefecture from many aspects.
What’s more, an immersive live-action cultural tourism performance of Dehang Dreamland will be staged at Dehang Miao Village. Finally, through a familiarization trip of rural tourism, high-quality rural tourism routes of Jishou City will be promoted by journalists from cultural and tourism new media across the country.
Since 2016, 26 Hunan rural cultural tourism festivals have been held successfully in different tourist seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. “Village Carnival” is held every year and Hunan Province has hosted high-quality national “village carnival” demonstration activities of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for four consecutive years. A batch of cultural and tourism products suitable for rural development and market requirements have been created to help poverty alleviation and rural vitalization.
Jishou City, as the capital city of Xiangxi Prefecture, is the hometown of well-known Miao drum dances and has 67 intangible culture heritage items. In recent years, Jishou has built the first national 5A scenic area of Xiangxi Prefecture, namely Aizhai-Shibadong-Dehang Grand Canyon Scenic Area. This year, the tourism in Jishou is recovering rapidly. In the first quarter, the city received 3.7145 million tourists with the tourism revenue of 3.48 billion yuan, up 30.7% and 46.7% respectively compared to the same quarter of 2019.
