GuShiio.com Wen| new krypton
When the Spring Festival meets intangible cultural heritage: The narrative revolution of county tourism”
Outside Yuefei Temple in Tangyin County, Henan Province on the second day of the Lunar New Year, when an old man selling sugar paintings used maltose to outline the words “loyalty to serve the country, he may not have imagined that this action would become a million likes intangible cultural heritage performance on the Short Video platform. Outside the temple door, tourists speaking Beijing films, Cantonese, and Wunong soft language crowded the streets. Some of them wanted to check in the city of Qili, where “Fengshen” was filmed, and others wanted to experience the mystery of the birthplace of Zhouyi, a small city with a population of less than 500,000. The number of tourists received during the Spring Festival holiday increased by 38% year-on-year, and tourism revenue exceeded 1.78 billion yuan. nbsp;
This is the epitome of the 2025 Spring Festival tourism market. When the social practice of China celebrating the traditional New Year during the Spring Festival officially became the first Spring Festival since it became the intangible cultural heritage of mankind, a revolution in the county narrative quietly occurred. Ctrip data shows that the number of searches for attractions related to intangible cultural heritage surged by 87% year-on-year, and the creators of the story of small cities are those once ignored county cultural tourism IPs. nbsp;
In Lichuan, Jiangxi Province, on the 1800-meter ancient street of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Zhang Henshui’s former residence has become a pilgrimage place for literature lovers. The local government bundled and marketed this representative writer of the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly Sect with the ancient city. Through sitcoms, literature weeks, and intangible cultural heritage markets, it forcibly transformed a deserted old street into a cultural magnetic field that receives 30,000 tourists per day. This immersive experience model of IP+ cultural tourism + technology is rewriting the rules of the game for county tourism: tourists are no longer chasing the crowds of people in the 5A scenic spot, but are willing to queue for two hours for a sitcom of “Fengshen” and serve a cup of Magu Fairy Tea drives 300 kilometers. nbsp;
Behind this transformation is the deep logical iteration of China’s tourism consumption. When tourists from north to north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen begin to get tired of the same commercial complexes, county tourism fills the spiritual depression of urban people with its low-density and high-concentration cultural experience. As Dai Bin of China Tourism Research Institute said: Tourism consumption is shifting from looking at mountains and water to seeing people and life, and counties are precisely the last bastion to preserve the authenticity of life. rdquo;
The ice sculptures in Harbin’s Ice and Snow World have not yet melted, and the Hainan Roundabout Highway is already crowded with self-driving teams from the north. During the Spring Festival of 2025, 62% of the country’s 501 million people traveled across provinces, and per capita consumption increased by 7% year-on-year. The contradictory nature of this set of data just reveals the dialectics of the current tourism market: the more we pursue poetry and distance, the more we need counties to serve as both transit stations and destinations. nbsp;
In Altay, Xinjiang, in a Kazakh felt house next to a ski resort, Mr. Wang, a Guangdong tourist, drank horse milk while using his mobile phone to book a charter bus service to Turpan the next day. ldquo; In the past, I felt that Xinjiang was too big to dare not come. Now there is high-speed rail between all counties, and every town has a special B & B, which can make you more in-depth.” rdquo; This kind of beaded tourism has increased the consumption of tourists during the Spring Festival in Xinjiang by 9.35% year-on-year, of which county-level receptions account for more than 40%. nbsp;
On the gold belt at 25 degrees north latitude in the south, a more secretive battle for traffic is underway. Putian, Fujian Province used the birthday of Mazu to create a Spring Festival at Sea, and orders surged by 40%; Mile, Yunnan Province, combined hot springs with vineyards, making soaking water and picking fruits a new favorite of middle-class families; Yangshuo, Guangxi, used an AI guide system to solve the stubborn problem of tour guides and achieve tourist complaints. The rate dropped by 60%. These seemingly scattered tactics actually point to the same strategy: using differentiated experiences to accommodate the upgrade needs in consumption downgrades. nbsp;
The outbreak of county tourism is essentially a consumption revolution in which rural areas surround cities. While RevPAR (revenue per available room) of first-tier city hotels fell by 7.3% year-on-year, bookings for high-star hotels in the county doubled year-on-year. This contrast between the price depression and the experience highland makes X, which spends less money and dresses more wild, a new criterion for young people to check in on social media.” nbsp;
From flow to retention: supply-side breakthrough in small counties
On the 15th of the first lunar month in Xichong County, Sichuan, when the dragon dance team passed through the peach forest, photographer Xiao Chen used a drone to capture a magical scene: traditional folk customs blended with the mountains and seas of flowers in the camera. These Short Video eventually brought 30,000 + bookings to the local area. But this is just the beginning to break the curse of being full when flowers bloom and leaving the door empty after flowers fade. Xichong County has extended the peach blossom season into four seasons: spring market, summer music festival, autumn hiking, and winter hot springs, turning one-time consumption into continuous repurchase. nbsp;
This supply-side reform is being rolled out in counties across the country. At the transportation level, China’s high-speed rail mileage exceeded 47,000 kilometers by the end of 2024, and 95% of the counties achieved two-hour high-speed rail circle coverage; at the service level, AI navigation and congestion warning systems were stationed in 4A-level scenic spots, and post-95 town mayors even learned to use Big data to predict tourist preferences; at the cultural level, Tangyin County has developed the Eight Trigrams of “Book of Changes” into a divination experience project, and Lichuan County has turned fragments of Zhang Henshui’s novels into AR treasure hunting games. These innovations may seem small, but they accurately hit the itch of tourists: they need to be both original and modern. nbsp;
The capillary revolution of inbound tourism: When foreigners enter the county vegetable market
At the Beijing Ditan Temple Fair on the fourth day of the New Year, when Spanish tourist Maria held a selfie with candied gourd, she may not have known that she was participating in a two-way cultural experiment: ticket orders for inbound tours during the Spring Festival in 2025 will increase by 180%, of which 30% of tourists flow to the county. In Wuzhen, Zhejiang, Yushu Technology’s robot lion dance team amazed foreign tourists; in Yuanjia Village, Shaanxi, German bloggers learned to make trouser belts from their aunt, and the video playback volume exceeded 10 million. What these fragments piece together is a new picture of county diplomacy. nbsp;
The driving force of this capillary revolution comes not only from the expansion of the visa-free policy. my country has comprehensively relaxed and optimized the transit visa-free policy. It has fully waived visas with 26 countries, unilaterally exempted entry visa-free for 38 countries, and transition-free for 54 countries. Visa exemption, transit visa-free stay time has been extended to 240 hours, and 21 new transit visa-free entry and exit ports have been added. It also stems from the initiative of county cultural tourism. Jianshui County in Yunnan has packaged the purple pottery making experience into Oriental Lego, attracting parent-child tourists from Japan and South Korea; Ding ‘an County in Hainan uses village cafes (rural cafes) to take over white-collar workers from foreign companies from Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen; Even a vegetable market in a county in Henan has begun to provide bilingual Chinese and English signs. These details make the sinking market a new venue for telling the story of China well. nbsp;
However, in order for traffic to truly precipitate, the last mile problem still needs to be solved. In an ancient village in Jiangxi Province, French tourist Pierre complained that he couldn’t find an English guide, and that the WiFi in the B & B couldn’t connect to Google Maps. rdquo; This embarrassment exposes the weakness of county internationalization: when hardware catches up with big cities, lagging service awareness can become a fatal injury. As Ctrip Liang Jianzhang said: High-end B & Bs are not as simple as putting a bathtub, but to build a complete experience ecosystem.& rdquo;
Conclusion: Looking for certainty in tidal effects
Looking back at the Spring Festival in 2025, behind the travel data of 501 million people, there are two major uncertainties in China’s consumer market: first, the county economy is moving from the bench to the main battlefield, and second, the experience economy spawned by cultural confidence has become a new growth pole. But to prevent this small town carnival from becoming a flash in the pan, three questions still need to be answered: How to transform the explosive traffic during the Spring Festival into a daily flow? How to find a balance between commercialization and authenticity? How to truly integrate the narrative of small cities into the global context?& nbsp;
Perhaps the answer lies in a scene in Tangyin County: When tourists scan the code on their mobile phones to collect the hexagram of King Wen in Qili City, they are not only consuming traditional culture, but also participating in cultural reproduction. This ancient sense of future may be the key to the transition of county tourism from becoming popular to becoming popular. nbsp;
