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Culture  

Infrastructure Benefits

    To prepare for the launch and expansion of Red tourism, Ruijin City had to invest RMB 100 million in improving its infrastructure. Compared with Jinggangshan and Yan’an – two bigger Red Tour brothers, Ruijin is a latecomer in this industry, and its industrial chain is short. In terms of the number of tourists and its economic performance, Ruijin is still in its initial phase.

    Ruijin’s accommodation facilities were inadequate. Many tourists, after visiting Ruijin, took up lodgings in Ganzhou City, two hours away by train. Only a few people got rich from the “Red” operations like those of Yang Yanhong and Yang Hua.

    Nevertheless Ruijin people are feeling their way into theme-related businesses. According to Chen Huaming, a member of the CPC Shazhouba Town Committee, in 2006 Shazhouba made an attempt to create an old street between the “Red Well” and the site of the Second National Congress of the Chinese Soviet Republic. But the attempts to fatten local purses failed. During the slack season, the souvenir shops and peasant-style restaurants had no customers and had to suspend business. Chen Huaming sighs, “We knew that many of our concepts to develop the tourist trade were out of date, but to restore a convincing and attractive Red Tour site was beyond our financial reach.”

    Efforts, however, still continue. New Guanshan Village of Shazhouba Town, a large Red Tour project, is now under construction. Chen Huaming told this reporter that it will be a model village that combines a tourist street of Hakka characteristics with the picturesque countryside landscape. The project is located at the site of the Second National Congress of the Chinese Soviet Republic, adjacent to Ruijin City Taiwan Innovation Park. With a population of 1,236, in 2009 the village’s per capita annual income was a mere RMB 3,720. Before its reinvention as a tourist attraction, village houses went unrepaired for years.

    Public hearings produced an 85 percent majority in favor of the conversion. The Shazhouba Town government invited specialists to plan the community’s resurrection and get feedback from the villagers. Ruijin is in Hakka culture zone. The architectural plan for residences featured retention of traditional Hakka characteristics. “The first floor is designed as shopfront, and the second for living; third floor use would be up to villagers themselves. It can be used for an inn,” Chen Minghua noted, continuing, “In addition to the unified Hakka architectural style, we will also honor Hakka lantern culture and folklore, through its unique wedding ceremonies and monthly birthday parties.”

    Statistics show nearly 100 Guanshan villagers are now employed in Ruijin City’s Industrial Park, earning on average a monthly salary of RMB 1,600, and 34 of its households have joined the “Red Well Families” tourism and catering cooperative. Local green thumbs have developed 24 hectares of agri-tourism, 3.3 hectares of grapes, and 2 hectares devoted to fish ponds. As new residences are being constructed, and the villagers are filling out applications to build rural home-inns that provide countryside indulgences such as angling and pick-it-yourself fruit farms.

    The project is expected to reach completion in October 2011, and Chen Huaming is confident about its future. “What with the Red Tours, new countryside and the Taiwan Innovation Park, it will take a whole day for tourists to tour all of Shazhouba. Lingering is sure to increase consumption, so prosperity through tourism will soon be realized.”

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VOL.59 NO.12 December 2010 Advertise on Site Contact Us