Red culture and peaceful surroundings draw holiday visitors to Hebei village

Standing in a spacious courtyard dotted with several trees and dozens of potted plants, Han Huiru greets the streams of visitors who come to Lijiazhuang village on holidays to escape the crush of big-city life and enjoy "red" culture.

Situated in a mountainous area in Pingshan county, North China's Hebei province, Lijiazhuang is the former site of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, a witness to revolutionary history.

Since 2016, the local government rebuilt the former site and started to develop red tourism, which features visits to sites of significance in revolutionary history, to promote the construction of beautiful rural areas and poverty alleviation.

In response to local government's vision and the appeal of building beautiful villages, Han decided to spend about 200,000 yuan ($28,920) to transform her own house into a homestay, give up pig breeding and focus on the agritainment business in 2017.

Her homestay has four simple but neat guestrooms and a small restaurant offering local and green food.

"In the beginning, I felt a little bit painful because I raised pigs for over 10 years and it brought me a good income, but then I slowly realized that it is too exhausting for me to continue the work as I grew older and lost much physical strength".

More importantly, she added, managing a homestay is less risky and less tiring, and means her house is cleaner.

According to Han, her homestay can accommodate 10 guests, at 100 to 130 yuan per night. In 2019, she earned 100,000 yuan.

"Some of my guests come here over 10 times a year", Han said, adding that apart from providing a guesthouse, she also cooks for them. "Sometimes they praise my cooking, which makes me satisfied", she said.

In Lijiazhuang village, 27 local households run rural homestays like Han, with an annual income of 50,000-200,000 yuan, and there are also 10 high-quality homestays operated under cooperation between villagers and professional enterprises. Villagers receive a share of 30,000-70,000 yuan every year, said Hou Xiaobing, a village-stationed Party secretary assigned to Lijiazhuang by the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee.

"Since the COVID-19 pandemic situation has eased, the rural homestays are filled with visitors every Friday to Sunday", Hou said.

According to Hou, 88 households with 259 people live in the village, and driven by the tourism industry, all nine impoverished households in Lijiazhuang have been lifted out of poverty.

From 2017 to 2019, about 1.2 million tourists visited Lijiazhuang village, and the village's per capita net income reached 25,000 yuan last year, Hou said.

Lijiazhuang also developed cultural products like paper-cuttings, fans, books and magazines related to red culture, special agricultural products such as dates and sesame oil to attract visitors, he said.

Through management of rural homestays and developing special local products, Lijiazhuang has made red culture and rural tourism a catalyst for economic development and improvement of villagers' livelihoods, he said.

In the next step, the village will work with companies to upgrade the homestays run by the villagers, and make efforts to increase the influence of the village to attract more tourists to experience rural and ecological culture, as well as red culture, he added.