Phnom Penh (FN), Oct. 27 – On 27 October, the 2023 Guilin Art Festival will kick off among the picturesque natural scenery of Guilin in China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. More than a hundred sessions and performances will be staged outdoors, setting off an upsurge of art in this world-leading tourist city. Distinguished guests and art fans from home and abroad will get together in Guilin to enjoy the harmonious beauty of the “Coexistence” of nature and art.
In recent years, Guilin, oriented at becoming a world-class landscape tourism city, a world-class destination of cultural tourism, a world-class wellness and recreational resort, and a world-class tourist consumption center, is speeding up the development toward a world-class tourism city.
Constantly Improving the Ecological Environment to Recover Green Hills and Clear Waters
Lijiang River, considered as the soul of landscape in Guilin, is one of the most beautiful rivers on earth. The conservation and treatment of Lijiang River is vital for the city’s attractiveness as a landscape tourism city, and for its sustainable development as well as the people’s well-being.
Guilin Landscape Protection Research Institute was established to promote the application for the UN’s Champions of the Earth Award 2023 with the integrated conservation project of Lijiang River. It also initiated the program of creating a novel work mode “Digital Lijiang River—Smart Law Enforcement and Justice”, where judicial interaction meetings are regularly convened over the ecological conservation of Lijiang River, and, as a nationwide innovative move, an ecological protection mechanism supervised and regulated by the public security system was established and improved, and measures were taken to enhance the eco-environmental protection regulating and law enforcement system at the municipal-, county-, township-, and village-levels.
Guilin also keeps boosting the overall functionality of its eco-environment by comprehensively implementing the “Four treatments” project of the Lijiang River’s main stream, namely disorder treatment, water treatment, mountain treatment, and root cause treatment. All the quarries in the Lijiang River basin were closed down for ecosystem restoration. As far, all the 16 sub-projects of the five major ecological restoration projects, including the ecological landscape restoration of Guilin Karst World Natural Heritage Site (Scenic Area), Lijiang’s urban section coastline and island ecological restoration, and the ecological restoration of damaged mountains in the Lijiang River basin, have all been completed and accepted.
Guilin also made its marks in pollution prevention and control, creating an air quality rate up to 93.9 per cent, and up-to-standard water quality rate of 100 per cent in major rivers and centralized drinking water sources above the county-level.
At the Fulong Island and Daxiao Island on the Lijiang River with shading trees, twittering birds and fragrant flowers, you can see egrets flying over from time to time. The city is armed by a water system formed by the “Two Rivers and the Four Lakes”, presenting a spectacular sight where “Thousands of peaks standing in the wild, one river flowing around the city” and characteristic urban scenery where “The city is in the landscape, and vice versa”, gaining widespread popularity among domestic and foreign tourists.
Comprehensively promoting cultural-tourism integration by benchmarking international standards
The vibes Guilin derive from its profound historical and cultural heritages. It is a beautiful picture of ancient buildings, traditional handicrafts and folk activities, so fascinating that visitors would be too delighted to be homesick.
Since 2022, the city has carried out, in a coordinated manner, 55 demonstration projects, 113 key projects, and 33 major events to build a world-class tourism city with “Global vision, international standards, Chinese style, Guangxi characteristics, and Guilin classical features”, which is the principle proposed by the government. According to the city’s planning for 2023, 10 major events as well as 20 iconic leading projects will be implemented under the framework to build a world-class tourism city, and 80 key projects will be promoted as priority.
For accelerating the building of a world-class landscape tourism city, it will vigorously encourage the construction of the world-class tourist attractions of Lijiang River and Yulong River, the Battle of Xiangjiang River “red culture” tourist attraction, the Longji Scenic Area into a national AAAAA tourist attraction, and national-level tourist resorts of Taohua Bay Eco-tourism Community and Yanshan Tourism Resort, with an effort to enliven the sightseeing tourism of Guilin and make the city a more competitive tourism city in a global context.
To facilitate the work to enhance the quality of Guilin as a world-class cultural tourism city, a program has been initiated to fully explore the city’s profound cultural deposits as one of the first historical and cultural cities in China, the Lingqu Canal protection and upgrading project has been launched, and the planning as well as construction of other projects are being accelerated, including the Aggression-resistance War Cultural Celebrities Museum, the Ancient Streets of the Song Dynasty, and the Thousand-acre Lotus Pond Wetland of Qintan, etc. The international influence of Guilin as a cultural tourism is increasing constantly.
In terms of development into a world-class wellness and recreational resort, the city devoted great efforts to cultivate new business formats including recreation and vacation, health and wellness, aesthetic medicine, e-sports, fashion design, etc.; it is also energetically building a world-class tourist consumption center by expediting the establishment of port duty-free shops. After the Yangshuo Cross-border (Zero-duty) Experience City is completed and open for business, world-famous brands have settle in, continuously lifting the attractiveness and competitiveness of Guilin as a world-class tourism city.
Seeking both internal and external improvements; bringing new vibes for building a world-class tourism city
2023 witnesses the delightful revitalization of cultural tourism in China, which also adds new momentum for Guilin to develop into a world-class tourism city. The local government has published 20 incentive policies and measures for recovering the tourism industry, and the through HSR to Hong Kong and non-stop flights to Kuala Lumpur have been resumed successively; the first Guilin Art Festival and Strawberry Music Festival were successfully held, the BRICS Tourism Ministers’ Meeting 2022 satisfactorily hosted, and the Visits of Diplomats in China to Guilin 2023 and Guilin cultural tourism promotion conferences organized smoothly; a series of featured events including Winter Tour in Guilin, Free Tour of the Eight Great Mountains in Colorful Summer, and Night Fair of Cultural Tourism Consumption, aiming at fostering brand-new business formats of consumption in cultural tourism and stimulating the local and surrounding tourism markets.
Guilin plans to quicken the steps in city upgrading. Specifically, it will continue to optimize the layout of both the old urban areas and new districts, and promote the construction of infrastructure such as street landscapes, red and green ways, sculptures in public spaces, signs and boards, etc., accelerate the construction of key projects including the ease of traffic congestion and Sponge City, resume and launch new non-stop flights to ASEAN countries as soon as possible, and shoot for intercontinental passenger flights.
It will step up forming of a world-class service system, make sustained efforts to promote the standardization of tourism services, improve the smart tourism service system, and evolve into a “Non-language barrier international tourism city”.
=FRESH NEWS
