Holidaymakers get back to the countryside
Print Edition
Jiading District’s Lijiang Ecological Park, Huating Household and Malu Grape Park were among the rural scenic attractions that proved very popular during the National Day holiday.
“Jiading district government has been developing the rural tourism market in recent years, making it more and more popular. Hotel rooms and restaurants were fully booked two weeks before the festival in my park,” said Shen Weigao, the ecological park’s owner.
Jiading Industrial Zone is famous for its strawberries, and Dengta Village strawberries are the most sought after. Lijiang Ecological Park is right beside Dengta Village, and visiting both is a must when the strawberries and peach blossoms enter their peak period.
“The key to agritourism is the sense of original so that urban residents can experience the farming life and have a fresh feeling,” Shen said. Since 2007, he has raised chickens, ducks, cows and fish in addition to vegetables and pears.
The park has a rice field the size of around 30 soccer pitches. It also produces soy sauces, vegetable oils and rice wines.
During the peak peach season, traffic on the Shuangzhu Highway in front of the park is often stuck for up to three hours due to the number of visitors keen to sample its produce.
In front of Malu Grape Park, a restaurant supplies grilled mutton over applewood, which is hugely popular. In the restaurant there are dozens of ovens with walls on three sides and applewood underneath to grill meat from sheep raised in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. The meat is cooked for at least three hours.
“With modern equipment the meat can be grilled more quickly, however, the quality is lower, thus we went back to traditional methods,” restaurant manager Xu Hongliu said. During high season the restaurant has 500 to 600 customers a day.
The growing popularity of agritourism is partly due to online marketing, officials from the district’s tourism administration said.
Shen expected the park to gradually grow in popularity through word-of-mouth, but didn’t expect it to grow so quickly, to a point where the number of visitors at peak times is almost too much to handle. “I am a bit worried about the surging number of visitors during Chinese New Year and holidays as the traffic on the highway outside the park is so congested and we can hardly treat visitors to their satisfaction,” Shen said.
However, too many visitors is a problem that other scenic spots might envy.
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