Editor's note: A county town can hold dreams and carry nostalgia. Every holiday, young people flock to county towns. This National Day, reporters from The Paper went to the "county" scene to experience the vitality, resilience, and real life of China's county economies. Here there are not only fresh explorations of county industrial breakthroughs and cultural-tourism integration, but also transformation practices that revive ancient cultural heritage in small towns. In each county sample, a differently wonderful China can be discovered. The National Day holiday is an important moment to observe the vitality and characteristics of the county economy. The Paper presents the special project "Going to the 'County' Scene" to understand the deeper driving forces of China's economic development. Today, we focus on Yixian, Anhui.

We took a car from Huangshan North Station and drove along the newly paved tourist road toward Shiting Village, Biyang Town, Yixian. Outside the window were layered black tiles and white walls, and the distant mountains were wrapped in a thin mist after rain, like a fairyland; roadside signs read "Xidi," "Hongcun," and "Bishan" one after another. Behind each sign is a nationally famous scenic area and tourist destination. Many people know they sit at the foot of Huangshan, but few mention that they all belong to Yixian.

In recent years, many "internet-famous county towns" have emerged across the country. Some rely on a single symbol to become popular for a short time, and the heat fades quickly, sinking again after two months. Yixian is different. It has not crowded into this competition. Yixian is a typical "small county" at the foot of Huangshan. As early as 1986, Xidi and Hongcun within its borders opened the precedent of China's rural tourism with a "20-cent ticket"; in 2000, the two villages were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the reputation of "China's countryside in a painting" spread. In fact, before the internet era arrived, Xidi and Hongcun had already quietly become famous through sketching, photography, and film and television dramas. In other words, Yixian is the first-generation source of China's county rural tourism traffic. Over the years, the people of Yixian quietly preserved Huizhou's old ancestral halls, old fish lanterns, and old wooden beams, and then added singing bowls, study tours, robots, and rice wine gift boxes, quietly growing into a highland for cultural-tourism investment.

During our visit with the research team from the Journalism School of Fudan University, we found that this small city gathers investors and talent from all over the country—Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Beijing, the Northeast, and even Taiwan executives have taken root here. The owner of a small shop at the entrance of Bishan Village casually told us: "Now when renting a house, you have to ask first whether it's for coffee, fish lanterns, or wellness." There is a vitality here. Rui Chuyao, manager of Bishan Bookstore, had just been transferred from Tonglu, Zhejiang; a craftsman from Yunxian Handmade settled here from the Northeast; the female manager of Manxi Hotel personally appeared in Douyin videos; and Puman Farm even turned rice wine into annual holiday gift boxes for enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta. The county town has only more than 70,000 local residents, yet it receives more than 19 million out-of-town tourists a year. During our visit, we deeply felt that a set of cultural-tourism products is quietly iterating in this small county: from "looking at houses" to "making fish lanterns," from "day-trip sightseeing" to "staying as neighbors." Yixian may provide a sample for China's county cultural-tourism economy.

Bishan Bookstore. Photo by Jiang Yunqi

The already rising "experiential cultural tourism"

After walking more than 20 minutes from Shiting Village, we reached Bishan Village. Under the skylight of Bishan Bookstore, the summer heat was three-dimensional. The wooden beams had absorbed the moisture of the plum rain, and a faint moldy fragrance lingered in the cracks of the bricks. Rui Chuyao, the store manager born in 1997, studied civil engineering in university. When she graduated, the industry was in a downturn, and she saw that Librairie Avant-Garde was hiring. By a twist of fate, she entered the field and opened another workplace experience—from Nanjing to Yunnan, from Tonglu to Bishan, she has lived in both cities and villages. She likes constantly changing work environments, and the flexible transfer mechanism of Librairie Avant-Garde fits this perfectly. The Nanjing headquarters has many young readers, and teachers from Nanjing University often come to pick books; the Bishan store mostly receives traveling families. "In summer, children's books and picture books sell best; in other periods, books on Anhui local culture dominate." Wang Ling, a longtime employee, is from this village. She joined Bishan Bookstore in 2013 and has stayed longer than several store managers. She said: "Not all customers come for 'books.' More and more people just order a coffee, sit for a while, and take a photo. Young people want different things; they mainly want something that looks good in photos." At the "Cow Pen Cafe" next to the bookstore, villagers really do cut through and come and go freely. The bookstore does not close its doors, and the village does not treat the bookstore as an outsider. "The bookstore is rooted in the countryside and cannot be closed off. The connection between the store and the village is hidden in countless tiny daily moments," Wang Ling said.

Bishan Bookstore has become a cultural attraction, bringing changes to Bishan Village in Yixian. Photo by Jiang Yunqi

Every April when rapeseed flowers bloom, and in November when autumn colors are at their peak, the bookstore holds reading clubs and performs Huangmei opera, with villagers and tourists crowded under the skylight. Last year, as Anhui cultural tourism heated up and Huizhou fish lanterns went viral, business at Yunxian Handmade also clearly improved—this is an already rising form of "experiential cultural tourism." In the Wang family branch ancestral hall, narrow at the front and deep at the back, two signs hang: "Yixian Primary and Secondary School Study Tour Base" and "Study Tour and Communication Base." Manager Sun Qingping has worked in tourism for nearly 18 years, doing tour guiding, operations, and marketing. She led us to the backyard: bamboo strips, fabric, dried pigments, and fish lanterns of all sizes swimming in midair—large ones like cattle and sheep, small ones that can be held with one hand. In the backyard classroom, tape, iron pliers, and bamboo strips were neatly stacked; a group of about a hundred university students was about to arrive. Craftsman Wang Lin picked up a bamboo strip split from old bamboo at least three years old, turned his wrist, and an arc appeared. We tried to bend one, and our hands trembled, afraid of breaking it. "In making fish lanterns, the real test of skill is selecting materials in the early stage. The bamboo must be old bamboo at least three years old, split by an experienced master, and bamboo nodes must be avoided, otherwise it cracks easily when bent," he said. Experience versions must be polished to prevent cuts, parade versions need thick bamboo strips for sturdiness, and the large fish lanterns that truly go on street parades need even thicker strips. Later, we spoke separately with Wang Miaomiao, founder of Yunxian Study Tours. She previously ran a sketching base, and both her father and grandfather were bamboo craftsmen. "What tourists truly care about is not only scenic spots such as Huangshan, Xidi, and Hongcun, but also the lifestyle, traditional skills, and rural daily life that represent Huizhou culture," Wang Miaomiao said.

The "Yunxian Handmade" study tour base in the Wang family branch ancestral hall of Bishan Village. Photo by Liu Sule

Yunxian Handmade, renovated in 2017 and opened in 2019, was the first to launch fish lantern study tours. Today, more than 20 intangible cultural heritage experiences are available here: fish lanterns, brick carving, stone carving, Huizhou ink gilding, Huizhou-style woodblock prints, plant tie-dye and wax dyeing, paper-cutting, brown sugar rice cakes, and yuting cakes. All more than 30 employees are intangible cultural heritage inheritors or senior study tour instructors. Sun Qingping said: "The most important thing is not whether they have certificates, but whether they are truly willing to settle down and learn the craft." This Spring Festival, fish lanterns appeared at CCTV's Anhui sub-venue, and prices at some homestays in Shexian and Yixian doubled. Fish lanterns are also changing: in the past they were pasted with paper and lit with candles; now they use fabric and LEDs; young people paint their own fish, while old craftsmen keep the old patterns. Yunxian Handmade also helps the village's old bamboo craftsmen sell bamboo baskets and bamboo hats on consignment, taking no commission, with all money going to the makers themselves. "I want the old bamboo craft that fewer and fewer people ask about to still have a market," Sun Qingping said. During a break in the interview, "post-2000" Wang Lin lowered his head and whittled a wooden fish lantern handle. He is from Jilin and has lived in Bishan Village for seven or eight years. Asked why he did not go to a big city, he thought for a moment: "Rent here is cheap. Young people have the space to freely open studios and start businesses, and the pressure of life is much lower than in big cities." He did not throw out any sentimental lines throughout; over and over he said just one word: "Stability." Nine to five, family nearby, slow but not empty. For now he is not starting a business. "If there is a chance later, I still want to use traditional intangible cultural heritage as the foundation and add a bit of modern creativity."

Experience projects at Yunxian Handmade. Photo by Jiang Yunqi

Hotels are no longer competing over rooms

In the domestic cultural-tourism market, the old accommodation-industry path of "competing over rooms" has long become unworkable, and many hotels in Yixian are improving emotional value through service and content, escaping the trap of "competing over rooms." We stayed at Shiting Academy, which is not a homestay in the conventional sense. The front desk has no cold-lit marble or fragrance. Instead, there are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the shadows of magnolia and metasequoia trees left by the old school building fall on white walls, making it feel like returning to an old rural school and also like stumbling into a peach blossom spring built by literati. The academy's foundation is the rural cultural lineage of Huizhou: the original site carries the memory of Shiting Primary School and the Zheng family residence. Old classrooms have been converted into a restaurant, bakery, audio-visual room, and karaoke bar. In the atrium, a row of bookshelves more than ten meters high rises straight to the roof, with ancient books, county annals, chess manuals, and travelogues all open. The fourteen rooms each have a different view—"Drunken Stone Pavilion" welcomes the dawn, "Joyful Yi Mountain" views the mountains, "Moon Hidden by Old Trees" embraces the moon, and "Western Corner Huizhou Charm" faces dark tiles; from the rooftop mountain-viewing pavilion, one can see Bishan, pagoda shadows, and lotus ponds by day, and the starry river and village lights by night. Here you are not treated as a guest, but rather like family: you can play chess, practice calligraphy, leaf through the "Yixian County Annals," pick vegetables in the fields, and chat with the academy's investor for half an hour. In the morning, the aunt who cooks brings handmade buns and fresh corn, which are still memorable.

Shiting Village in Biyang Town, Yixian, is not yet a "major scenic area," but several stylish places to stay have already grown here. The most frequently mentioned are Shiting Academy, Shiting Huayi Rural Homestay, and Shuimo Dongli, which are forming a new cultural-tourism cluster. We spoke with Qian Wenlong, party secretary of Shiting Village. He is determined that Shiting cannot "only farm." This is also why he dared to hand the old primary school to the academy, hand idle houses to homestays, and find ways to weave the village into Yixian's cultural-tourism landscape. "The village needs vitality, the elderly need work to do, and young people must be willing to return," Qian Wenlong said. Shiting Village cannot be a shadow of Hongcun and Xidi; it must walk its own path.

Shiting Academy. Photo by Han Yuting

Another impressive case is Manxi Hotel. Its innovation is not "making a more expensive guest room," but breaking away from the traditional positioning of scenic-area supporting accommodation and turning the hotel itself into an independent Huizhou-style vacation destination. Soon after opening, one livestream generated more than 20 million yuan in presale revenue, becoming a hot topic in the industry for a time. When we visited, the rain had just stopped. The hotel entrance was open, and a four-corner pavilion stood in the water courtyard; the woodcarving took intangible cultural heritage craftsmen more than a year. General Manager Fang Fang met us and first stopped the interview, clipped on a microphone, and asked an assistant to hold a phone and shoot a video for her personal account—her account has several thousand followers, and comments mostly ask about accommodation and guides. "Even in the off-season, the occupancy rate remains above 90 percent." She rarely mentions "guest room facilities" and repeatedly talks about how to blend healing, vacation, and Huizhou culture together. The experience programs here are packed: baduanjin, cycling, Huizhou ink pastry making, mortise-and-tenon blocks, singing bowl sound therapy, tea art, fish lantern making, guzheng, sachets... Among them, the free singing bowl sound therapy is almost fully booked every day. "It is also the project with the most female participation in the hotel; almost 100 percent fall asleep directly after lying down," Fang Fang said. Anxiety and insomnia have become normal, and a good sleep is itself a rigid need. "I want to truly keep tourists' time in the hotel." She often personally picks up guests, sweeps the floor, and chats with guests, and she does not wear a manager's uniform: "This is home, not a hotel. I am more like a host entertaining guests who have come to my home." The hotel has 55 rooms in total and firmly refuses to expand—"There are only 70,000 local people. Blind expansion cannot support it. Once the scale expands, operating costs become uncontrollable instead." Another purpose of not expanding rooms is to give space to scenery, allowing guests to personally experience spring vegetables, summer lotus, autumn maple, and winter snow. The hotel thus becomes a "destination," no longer a supporting facility. "Relying on scenic areas, you only do half a year's business; relying on your own content, you can do business all year round," Fang Fang said.

The singing bowl sound therapy experience project at Manxi Hotel is deeply loved by female customers. Photo by Liu Sule

Zhao Dingguo, general manager of Yiyun Bishan Hotel, also always mentions one phrase: "sense of scale." "If someone wants to chat, chat a little more; if someone wants quiet, keep distance." In summer he takes guests to play in streams, and in autumn and winter before dawn, after five o'clock, he takes people to the roof to wait for rain and mist to rise. "November and December are the most beautiful. Fog rises layer by layer over the fields, very interesting," Zhao Dingguo said. He remembers a guest from Jiangsu and Zhejiang who stared at a water buffalo for more than 20 minutes at six in the morning. The person said: "I want to chat with it." He found that many people today want exactly this bit of emotional value—a sentence, a photo, a buffalo can all become reasons. He deliberately left some guest rooms without televisions: "By hotel standards that's wrong, but we hope guests will come out." When the bar opens at night, strangers clink glasses, like being at a friend's home. Chen Xi, founder of Wumingchu, when it opened in 2021, was still called "Wumingchu Healing Hotel." At that time, platforms thought the word "healing" was too empty. He had stayed in Shanghai. Once, at the Jing'an Temple subway entrance, he was pushed along by the crowd and suddenly froze: going out for a walk, why rush like this? An administrative staff member at his company was scolded for being five minutes late, but she got up at five to make breakfast, take her child to school, and squeeze onto the subway. "Urban people need a chance to truly stop and adjust their state of life back," Chen Xi said. Wumingchu's fifteen detached villas plus guest rooms turn sleep management, weight management, four-season food therapy, and adolescent growth into courses. "A hotel is not a hospital and has no medical function. It only wants to intervene in the health stage before the hospital, earlier on," Chen Xi said. He calculated that in the future guest room revenue will account for only 20 percent. "What is truly valuable is courses, mentors, and health management." Right now, what worries him most is that "sleep improves, the body feels lighter, lifestyle changes, but it is hard to show in short videos and attract customers." Current guests are mainly from the Yangtze River Delta, relying on word of mouth, friends bringing friends.

Making "healing" the first choice

Although there is still a long way to go, what he cares about most is still that question—"After you come, what change can you actually take away?" Put the three cases together, and it already shows that Yixian's accommodation industry is no longer just tourism support; it has become a consumption scene for emotional value.

Robots, rice wine, and digital communities

A hundred meters from Shiting Village, the Fire Elf Camp stands on a 41-kilometer rural cycling route. The operating team originally came from cultural-tourism planning and clearly understood that "the camp itself is not a destination." Tourists usually go first to Xidi, Hongcun, and other places, then choose a homestay, and finally add a rural segment. "It counts as a kind of leisure supplement," the camp manager said. Children treat it as a nature classroom: bonfires, starry skies, tents, wild vegetables, insects, and streams. Briefly leaving screens, they learn camping and look at stars; young people come to drink coffee, barbecue, and listen to music. It is a low-threshold "wild-interest social place." Not long ago, a robot music flash mob made it hard to tell who was a tourist and who was a villager. "Small scene, big传播嘛." Although the camp is not large, it often receives inspection teams. Through planning output and operational services, it has become a conversational window for rural samples.

Along Yixian's BCE221 rural cycling path from Shiting Village through Bishan Village to Fengwu Village, the whole journey takes about half an hour. Fengwu Village is in the northwest of Biyang Town and was once a poor village "at the bottom": young people went out to work, farmland was abandoned, and the old tea factory and old farmhouses were empty. In recent years, relying on the party committee, government, and social forces to revitalize resources together, it has gathered cultural-tourism, design, and entrepreneurial talent and put idle resources back to use. Ke Changtao originally did channels in the Yangtze River Delta. At first he only wanted to build a rice wine raw material base here: transfer land to grow rice, brew rice wine from rice, and pair it with sweet potato buns and rice in gift boxes. Unexpectedly, "customers came and did not want to leave." "What attracts them is not only the products, but the village's natural environment and living atmosphere," Ke Changtao said. In 2023 the company decided to invest further in homestays, began construction in 2024, invested tens of millions of yuan, and officially opened last New Year's Day. Huang Xiaoyang, first secretary of Fengwu Village and head of the village-stationed work team, said: Bishan was spontaneously market-driven, "one coffee shop opens, then another opens in front, and business formats easily collide"; Fengwu is limited in location and space, so each introduced business is first evaluated to avoid duplication. "If 10,000 people come to this village in one day, it simply cannot handle it. The ideal state is two to three thousand people per day, naturally spreading into the village over 8 to 10 hours. The key is not how many people, but whether it matches the village's business formats, and whether they are willing to spend and willing to stop."

Puman Farm in Fengwu Village. Photo by Liu Sule

Walking in Fengwu Village, the most striking thing is that the concepts, design, and curatorial logic of rural space renovation are all remarkable. "Fengwu Season" was initiated by young returnees Liu Lubin and Zhang Liangqiu. A Beijing design team brought volunteers from CUHK, CAFA, Beijing Jiaotong University, and Tongji University to turn the long-abandoned "Yingfeng Li" into a rural memory museum, which won the Architizer A+Awards double prize in 2025. Rejecting large-scale demolition and construction, the team began with micro-renovation of space and acupuncture-style renewal, then extended to local cultural excavation and human reconstruction, ultimately achieving industrial upgrading and allowing talent to truly settle between urban and rural areas. The old water canal irrigated fields in the 1960s and 1970s and was abandoned in the 1990s. After bridges were rebuilt and scenery arranged, villagers went there to cool off in the evening and tourists came to take photos. Investment came, tourists came, and local carpenters and masons returned to work in the village. A young couple who had gone out once renovated an old house and every day livestreamed music and sold goods in the village. "Village development needs time first, and second it needs the right timing, place, and people. And 'people harmony' comes from the long-term trust accumulated by enterprises, the village committee, and villagers," Ke Changtao said. In village construction, he knows in his heart which tree was planted by whom, where things were bought, and even which families have had feuds. "Whether a village is mature is not about more and more shops opening, but about people, industry, space, and life slowly growing into a stable relationship," Ke Changtao said.

More than ten kilometers from Fengwu Village, something new has quietly grown—the "Xidi Health and Wellness Travel Residence Capability Sharing Center." It also revitalizes idle property, introduces market-oriented operations, and creates a new consumption scene. Central kitchen, 31 guest rooms, health experience area, AI intelligent monitoring, urban-rural point interchange... From the outside, it is hard to believe this is an elderly care service institution. The customer flow is mainly older people from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. Some sip tea, some sing karaoke, some practice calligraphy and play table tennis. From public areas to guest rooms, there is no harsh white light, only warm yellow soft light; the corridor has no smell of disinfectant, and more unexpectedly, chips are embedded in the pillows to monitor elderly sleep and health in real time. Behind this is the "Yishan Xiaozhu" travel-residence wellness service platform, which uses "cloud computing + AI + IoT" to upload heart rate, breathing, and sleep quality in real time. Once abnormal, staff respond immediately. Yang Guang, head of the center, defines it as "digital community + wellness travel residence."

Fire Elf Camp. Photo by Jiang Yunqi

According to statistics, on average more than 10,000 seniors "roam" in Yixian every day. At present, the "Yishan Xiaozhu" platform has connected more than 400 homestays across the county, radiating across the whole area. It can also show health data and same-day activities, and introduces point incentives: elderly people from Shanghai can do inspections and volunteer in this community to earn points, which can be exchanged for wellness travel-residence services in Yixian; conversely, points earned by elderly people participating in farming and learning a craft in Yixian can also be exchanged for agricultural products and handmade goods. This turns participants from "outside guests" into "their own people." Outside investors are not here to harvest the county town; they bring urban anxiety, capital, cameras, and algorithms, and collide with the old countryside to create something new. Yang Guang said cars need regular maintenance, and people also need regular physical and mental maintenance. "In the past, people traveled for 'day-trip sightseeing,' leaving after seeing, and there was almost no continuous connection between scenic areas and tourists; a place that truly makes people keep coming back must provide a continuously occurring need. What tourists care about has never been the scenic area itself, but whether the local culture and lifestyle can continuously bring spiritual enjoyment and emotional value," Wang Miaomiao said. During the conversation, one line from Wang Ling was thought-provoking—"A bookstore may not change a village, but it can become a new cultural attraction."