Recently, Tongyuan, a town of Haiyan, was included into “Beautiful Tourism (Health Care) Destinations 2024 of the Yangtze River Delta”. This selection of the beautiful destinations was jointly sponsored by the tourism associations of Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui.

Based on its target of building an ancient Tongyuan, a harmonious and beautiful town, a town rich in intangible culture heritages, and a town that is desirable to live in, Tongyuan has worked hard in recent years for the integrated development of agricultural and cultural tourism and health industry to create a health care experience destination through music festivals, intangible culture heritages and outdoor sports. Many “silver-hair” tourists have been attracted to come here for travels and vacations.

Lots of tourists are attracted to stay at the B&B hotel Fengyi Home located in Jiaxing’s first rural health community that has been under operation for three years in Fengyi Village. Whether they are old or young, tourists can live a life they want here, arrange and design by themselves the simple farm courtyards rich in flowers and grasses. Every courtyard is quiet and tranquil and full of strong rural atmosphere, so they are the travel destinations in tourist’ mind.

It is said this B&B hotel used to be an idle house, and after renovation, it can be used as a hotel for urban tourists now. It is just an attempt for this town to upgrade its idle houses to hotels.

Rich natural resources such as mountains and rivers are local advantages to develop health care and tourism industries. For example, Xueshuigang is a provincial-level “appropriate climate-based health village” for its mild and humid climate, four distinct seasons, 23.05% of forest coverage rate, good air quality and more than 5,000-hour time with the temperatures suitable for people’s body (from 9 ° C to 26 ° C) per year.

In recent years, this town has improved its rural environment, constructed harmonious and beautiful rural demonstration zones, and a future rural model belt in the south to drive the development of several villages as a group based on its excellent natural endowments. Its Fengyi and Xushuigang have been upgraded to AAA Golden Scenic Villages (the first batch) of Zhejiang. Tongyuan has cooperated with Ganpu Town (Scenic Area of South-north Lake) to construct a landscape zone of “Lake and Mountain Scenery”, which has been honored as a provincial-level “New Era Model Zone of ‘Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains’”. Its six villages have been constructed into harmonious and beautiful rural demonstration zones with a total area of 31 square kilometers, and ranked second in achievements in Jiaxing.

In the construction process, this town has leveraged its historical and cultural resources to integrate culture and tourism. For example, Jiangnan Kitchen Range Painting Experience Museum in the Scenic Area of Fengyi shows visitors the charm of kitchen range paintings - an intangible cultural heritage. Other intangible cultural heritages have been well inherited and exhibited as well in each village such as paper-cutting skills, rice wine making skills, etc. Based on its mineral lake and the corridors along the paddy fields, this town has tapped its revolutionary resources to build an agriculture-tourism integrated health care center such as Party History Museum of Pengjiayan, Changshanhe Museum of Imprints of Times, Xueshuigang Education and Training Center, etc.

Now, the town has established a strong health care industry represented by Fengyi Star Nursing Home and Muxinju Resort Hotel, developed various health care products such as wormwood medicines, and many tourism experience products based on its revolutionary culture education, rural health care, ecological tourism and sightseeing, farming culture experience and parent-child tours to the fields. In the first half of this year, Fengyi ranked first in Jiaxing for the fourth time in a row in the tourism development monitoring and evaluation of AAA scenic villages in 2023.

With the theme of “Thriving Cultural Tourism in the Yangtze River Delta” the selection of the “Beautiful Tourist (Health Care) Destinations 2024 of the Yangtze River Delta” was launched this July and three destination lists with themes of ancient town resorts, health care and self-driving tours are set to deeply explore and promote the excellent cultural tourism resources of the Yangtze River Delta from the perspectives of the authority, public and media, meet people’s cultural needs and advance the high-quality integrated development of culture and tourism of the Yangtze River Delta. 24 destinations with the themes of ancient town resorts, health care and self-driving tours were selected, eight ones for each theme.