(Yicai Global) March 7 -- Anji county in China’s eastern Zhejiang province has spent nearly two decades transforming its limestone mine into a unique tourist destination with the aim of attracting visitors from the neighboring city of Shanghai.

In the past 18 years, Yu, a village in Anji county, has implemented development plans, improved the environment, set up a tourism company, and built mining site parks, undergoing major change in the process, Wang Yucheng, a deputy to the National People’s Congress and secretary of the Party Committee of Yu, told Yicai Global.

The village had nearly CNY13.1 million (USD1.9 million) in revenue last year, with the villagers’ per-capita income at almost CNY65,000 (USD9,365), Wang said.

Focusing on attracting visitors from Shanghai has been the standard for the tourism industries of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces for many years, Cheng Jun, vice president of the Modern Agricultural Association of Zhejiang, told Yicai Global.

indeed, Anji’s scenic natural landscapes have enticed many urban tourists, especially from Shanghai.

It is almost a human instinct to travel to the countryside to get closer to nature, so the demand for rural tourism is heartfelt, Cheng noted.

Rural tourism is becoming a definite trend that is rapidly developing in China’s southern coastal provinces and areas around mid-sized and big cities in the central regions.

The relative scarcity of rural resources is evident, so the countryside is becoming the focus of new development, Chen Hong, secretary of the Party Committee of Zhaotong University in Yunnan province, told Yicai Global.

With the support of the No. 1 Central Document, a key annual government policy document, local governments have issued special bonds to revitalize rural areas, including improving rural habitats and building infrastructure.

The urbanization rate of China’s resident population exceeded 60 percent for the first time in 2019 and reached 65.2 percent last year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Meanwhile, the share of gross domestic product from farming to total GDP dropped to about 7 percent.

Editors: Shi Yi, Futura Costaglione