Cave homes turn owners into tour entrepreneurs
Source: Xinhua |
June 19, 2013, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
FARMERS from north China's Loess Plateau have turned their cave houses into attractions allowing them to benefit from the nation's tourism boom.
Cave houses are common in the area, especially in Yan'an, a city in northwest China's Shaanxi Province that served as a revolutionary base for the Communist Party of China for 13 years before the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949.
Local resident Zhang Hujiao decided to promote cave house tourism in 2005, when many of her village's younger residents were migrating to bigger cities. She stayed behind and recognized the market value hiding behind the cave houses.
"I never imagined I could make a fortune from them," Zhang said of the cave homes.
When she was young, her family lived in a yellow-loess cave, sharing a bed made out of bricks and heated by fire underneath. "My family was very poor. I always complained to my mother: Why is our home so crowded and dark? Why do we have to share one quilt?" she recalled.
Before 2005, when Zhang moved into a new cave house with modern amenities, she was a farmer and vendor with an annual income of less than 2,000 yuan (US$326).
Yan'an has also helped to promote "agritainment" by offering residents preferential policies, such as tax exemptions, free inspections and training in exchange for allowing tourists to visit.
Zhang was one of those who chose to open her home to outsiders. Zhang's business grew rapidly. In 2011, she invested over 1.2 million yuan to buy 27 cave houses in the Date Garden, where Mao Zedong wrote many revolutionary works from 1943 to 1947. Zhang's houses receive more than 100,000 tourists annually.
Yan'an has over 2,500 such resorts generating annual income of 511 million yuan, officials said.
Cave houses are common in the area, especially in Yan'an, a city in northwest China's Shaanxi Province that served as a revolutionary base for the Communist Party of China for 13 years before the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949.
Local resident Zhang Hujiao decided to promote cave house tourism in 2005, when many of her village's younger residents were migrating to bigger cities. She stayed behind and recognized the market value hiding behind the cave houses.
"I never imagined I could make a fortune from them," Zhang said of the cave homes.
When she was young, her family lived in a yellow-loess cave, sharing a bed made out of bricks and heated by fire underneath. "My family was very poor. I always complained to my mother: Why is our home so crowded and dark? Why do we have to share one quilt?" she recalled.
Before 2005, when Zhang moved into a new cave house with modern amenities, she was a farmer and vendor with an annual income of less than 2,000 yuan (US$326).
Yan'an has also helped to promote "agritainment" by offering residents preferential policies, such as tax exemptions, free inspections and training in exchange for allowing tourists to visit.
Zhang was one of those who chose to open her home to outsiders. Zhang's business grew rapidly. In 2011, she invested over 1.2 million yuan to buy 27 cave houses in the Date Garden, where Mao Zedong wrote many revolutionary works from 1943 to 1947. Zhang's houses receive more than 100,000 tourists annually.
Yan'an has over 2,500 such resorts generating annual income of 511 million yuan, officials said.
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