Miao village finds a new life in tourism
Print Edition
As food steams and toasts chorus through his restaurant, Hou Yanjiang roams around asking tourists their opinions on the dishes and services they are receiving.
Hou, 39, is the owner of Houjiazhuang, a three-story rural inn that was once his house in Xijiang, a Miao ethnic village tucked away in southwest China’s Guizhou Province.
“The tourism sector has been recovering since May as the COVID-19 epidemic wanes,” said Hou, adding that his restaurant generates more than 5 million yuan (US$745,000) in annual sales. “I started from scratch 12 years ago, and now my life is getting so much better.”
Xijiang is located in Guizhou’s Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture.
The village is home to almost 2,000 families, and most are from the Miao ethnic group. Xijiang boasts more than 1,000 stilted houses — typical wooden buildings of the Miao.
Over almost 1,000 years, Xijiang have built a distinctive Miao culture which includes dances performed in handmade Miao costumes and songs sung in the Miao dialect.
But the villagers of Xijiang had been struggling in poverty for generations, cut off from the outside world by surrounding mountains.
To make a living, 90 percent of the local population traveled to big cities as migrant workers in the 1990s. The mass migration emptied the village and threatened the end of the Miao culture.
“In 2005, the average annual per capita income was just 1,431 yuan, barely half the national average,” said village official Li Song.
In 2008, the local government began developing the village’s tourism industry by upgrading its infrastructure.
They brought in a tourism company the next year, to tap the Miao culture’s market potential. The village soon became a tourism hit.
With the support of the local government, Hou received an interest-free loan of 30,000 yuan. He transformed his stilted house into a family inn.
“Many locals returned and made money quickly by renting their houses or starting businesses,” Hou said.
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