Across China: War-scarred hinterlands reborn as prosperous mountain retreats

BEIJING, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Summer is a busy and joyful season for Li Quanlin, owner of a farmstay in Wuchuan County, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, as tourists flock in. Steamed oat noodles, fried cakes, and lamb stews crowd his tables, while laughter spills through the sunlit courtyard.

Li, in his late fifties, treasures his peaceful and fulfilling life, a stark contrast to the war-torn years he knows about in his hometown.

Over eighty years ago, Li's home was nestled in the key area of the Daqing Mountain anti-Japanese war base. While Chinese soldiers fought through the mountains despite hunger and exhaustion, his father supported them by supplying food, delivering military intelligence, and sheltering the wounded.

The mountain trails once trodden by the anti-Japanese fighters now welcome tourists nationwide. An asphalt road threads through the ruins of the war with memorial halls scattered in the mountains to form a tour loop.

Zhao Xinyu, a Beijing sophomore visiting Daqing Mountain with her roommates, was deeply moved by the memorial exhibits. "Our simple daily routines, from classrooms to the dormitory and dining halls, were won by wartime martyrs' sacrifice," she said.

Zhao stopped by Li's farmstay for meals and rest after their visits. The farmstay can accommodate over 200 diners and host up to 30 overnight guests, generating an annual income of around 70,000 yuan (about 9,798.3 U.S. dollars).

Wuchuan County has developed red tourism leveraging China's war of resistance historic sites. They've upgraded local farmstays and fruit-picking farms to attract more visitors.

In 2024, the county attracted 806,000 visitors, bringing in 130 million yuan. The number of visitors is expected to surpass one million in 2025.

Across China, many regions share Wuchuan's story. Once vital to the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, these areas now thrive by leveraging revolutionary heritage to boost tourism, which in turn fuels local specialty industries.

Xingxian County in north China's Shanxi Province served as a vital transportation hub and military command center in the country's resistance efforts. The once-barren mountains there are now blanketed with apricot trees, providing both pastoral scenery and a substantial boost to the locals' income.

Six-year-old Wang Xiyao began his summer vacation in Xingxian County with his parents. They visited a revolutionary memorial, ate farmhouse meals, spent a night in a cave dwelling, and his favorite part was picking apricots at Caijiaya Village. "The ones I picked myself taste the sweetest," he said.

Villager Gao Xianglian planted four apricot varieties across her 0.2-hectare orchard to cater to different tastes. "Since early June, tens of thousands of visitors have come to pick fresh fruit, generating over 30,000 yuan in profit," she said.

"Driven by eco-tourism featuring fruit-picking and farmstays, the annual per capita income of local people has risen from under 4,000 yuan to 12,000 yuan in the past decade," said Wen Yongli, Caijiaya's village chief.

About 300 km from Xingxian County lies Fuping County, north China's Hebei Province, home to the wartime military headquarters that once commanded key operations. Its three rows of adobe houses still stand beneath a thriving century-old tree.

Today, a memorial museum stands on this historic site. Visitors can see the living and combat environment during the war there, and it attracts over 300,000 visitors annually.

"When visitors leave the preserved sites, they step into the peaceful, prosperous life that was worth fighting for," said Zhou Huimin, deputy director of the museum.

To make the most of these revolutionary legacies, villages near the museum have developed agritourism attractions like mushroom farms, fruit-picking orchards, fishing ponds and farmhouse restaurants, creating a vibrant synergy between red tourism and rural revitalization.

Fuping has cultivated a complete mushroom industrial chain, including developing new varieties, planting and deep processing, yielding an annual output of 1.1 billion yuan.

Wang Zhiyong, a villager in Fuping, has grown mushrooms for over a decade, earning about 150,000 yuan a year. "More tourists come by now, and they often buy fresh mushrooms directly from the cultivation logs when they see them. It makes me so happy," said Wang. ■