Yixing, Jiangsu province [Photo/wxrb.com]
Yixing, a city known for its famed purple clay art and spectacular natural scenery, was recently listed as a pilot beautiful and livable city in Jiangsu province.
In the first half of the year, a number of tourism projects have been carried out in Yixing, which has benefited the modern service and capital construction industries.
The Yaohu Tourism Town project, which received 13 billion yuan ($1.87 billion) in investment and was signed in H1, will begin construction on its two main hotels this year, which will provide 3,000 rooms. It is expected to upgrade the level of rural tourism there.
The Yada Health Ecological Industrial Park, which will serve as a tourist distribution center in the Yangxian Eco-tourism Resort, will open to the public in September.
Yixing has given priority to improving its environment when developing rural tourism. It designated an area of 724.97 square kilometers as an ecological space. This accounts for 36 percent of the city's total area.
Yixing reduced coal consumption by a total of 590,000 tons over the course of two years and shut down 286 chemical companies over the course of three years. The percentage of days with good air quality was 82.5 percent last year, up from 56.8 percent in 2016, according to Shen Jian, Party secretary of Yixing.
Yixing has the largest agricultural sector in Wuxi and all of southern Jiangsu. Its rural area accounts for three-quarters of the city's entire area, and the rural population accounts for half of the total population. "To revitalize Yixing, we msut focus on rural revitalization," said Shen.
Yixing has spent over 5 billion yuan improving the living environment in its rural towns, including building normalized modern houses for farmers and increasing people's civility. 233 farming families living in Hufu town will move into newly-built houses in the near future.
Yixing is also working to build a larger and higher-quality new-generation industrial system. The city is working to develop strategic emerging industries such as integrated circuits and new energy and plans to build a city-level integrated circuit material base.
Shen said the city will continue to develop into a more livable city and make use of its abundant tourism attractions to transform itself into a moderately prosperous society.
