Tourism leads Kaihua out of poverty

Wu Xiuyu, a farmer from Longmen Village, Qixi Town, Kaihua County has made some 2,000 yuan since 2015 by delivering her vegetables to fellow villager Yu Guangqun, who runs a farm stay tourism business in the village.

Longmen Village at the upstream of Qiantang River became an AAA National Tourist Attraction site in 2014. Its 20 households in the village thrived by starting farm stay businesses. The village also launched poverty alleviation projects to help low-income farmers in Longmen by connecting them with farm stay business owners. So far, the village has sold more than 2.3 million yuan’s worth of agricultural products, and low-income farmers have seen per capita income increase by 1,000 yuan.

As the Kaihua National Park developed, farm tourism in Kaihua County flourished. The county received 6.3 million visits in the first 11 months in 2015 and made a total of 3.88 billion yuan. Kaihua’s villagers were able to benefit from the booming industry and low-income households were lifted out of poverty thanks to thriving tourism.

Cheng Zhangfu, a 76-year-old farm stay owner from Taihui Mountain started his business two years ago. “I’m probably the oldest person running a tourism business in the village.” He and his wife started their restaurant themselves with Cheng as the waiter and his wife the cook. In the past they lived on Cheng’s income from doing odd jobs, but in 2015 they made nearly 40,000 yuan running their restaurant.

Kaihua County launched several tourism related projects and completed relevant infrastructure building. It constructed the Yanglin Town Natural Spa Resort, Tongcun Town Waterside Terrace, Rapeseed Scenic Spot, Sunflower Scenic Spot, and so on. It completed the construction of three comprehensive village tourism projects, created star rating standards for all 382 farm stay businesses, and encouraged and supported farmers living below the 4,600 yuan annual household per capita income poverty line to take part in farm stay businesses. So far, Kaihua has constructed 48 provincial level farm stay characteristic villages, facilitated 490 business owners, 132 of whom were living below the poverty line.

Since more and more urban tourists visited those once unknown rural villages, local agricultural products became popular. Qiu Detian, a farmer running the Taihuishan Farm Stay business made a fortune in the past two years, as his dried rapeseeds got sold off quickly to visitors during peak season. Even other farmers benefited from his business as suppliers, selling to him free range eggs, teas, and locally brewed beers.

The rapid development of rural tourism soon led to a price hike of agricultural products, and more than 2,000 farmers who used to make less than 4,600 yuan a year saw their income increase on a large scale. In the meantime, Kaihua strengthened tourism management, constructed a service platform to organize low-income households to take part in hostel service management, farm stay restaurant chef training, and together with local authorities from towns, villages and business owners, found employment opportunities for some of the low-income farmers.

Kaihua County achieved poverty alleviation by developing its tourism industry. In the first nine months of 2015, the per capita disposable income of rural residents reached 10,469 yuan, a 10.3% increase from the same period last year. As of November 2015, all farmer households were lifted above the poverty line of 4,600 yuan per capita household annual income.