From tourism to big data, Chinese province presents itself in Silicon Valley

Chen Gang, deputy director of a task force directing the national big data pilot project in Guizhou speaks at an event to promote tourism in China's Guizhou province in San Francisco, the United States on Sept 27, 2016. From tourism to big data, Guizhou Province in southwestern China has presented itself as a tourism destination as well as an information technology pilot for the world to see.[Photo/Xinhua]

The mountain park province, as Chen called it, is boasting the world's largest water fall, arguably one of the world's oldest military fortress and the world's largest botanic garden, plus mountains, canyons, karst caves, forests, grassland, wetland and lakes, 3 of them on the list of world heritage sites recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

As colorful as the natural scenes are the people living on the territory, Chen noted at the San Francisco event attended by state and city officials and tourism industry representatives, adding that 17 ethnic hill tribes are there in Guizhou to show their rich and diversified and strikingly beautiful heritages, from clothing to music and dance, from construction structures of their residence to festive rituals. Tourists to Guizhou saw a 40 percent increase last year, he said.

At both events, Chen showed pictures of a new structure, a radio telescope known as the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, the world's largest and most sensitive of the kind, inaugurated in Guiping county, Guizhou, on Sunday, Sept 25.

Built with a 4,450-panel reflector as large as 30 football pitches to survey neutral hydrogen in deep space, observe celestial objects called pulsars, help with spacecraft tracking and communication, FAST is expected to help search for extraterrestrial intelligent life, or ET, possibly existing somewhere in the universe.

Chen said FAST is a new must see for visitors to his province.

Previously a top administrator in a district of Beijing before being reassigned to Guizhou about three years ago, the official did not consider switching the topics from tourism to big data as a frog leap. He believes both industries can work on a eco-friendly development strategy for a province relatively less industrial and yet having huge economic potentials.

However, Min Song, a Chinese-American presiding over local US-China Cultural and Communication Association, who helped organize the big data promotion event, was amazed. He visited Guizhou once on a business trip some 20 years ago, when it was one of the least developed provinces in China, said he never thought about the province would be turned into a high technology host of any kind.

"You are all welcome to tour Guizhou," Chen told his audiences.