From Industrial Hub to Tourist Hotspot: What's the Magic Here?

From Industrial Hub to Tourist Hotspot: What's the Magic Here?

2024-06-22 162 153

Since the popularity of places like Zibo in Shandong, Harbin, and Tianshui in Gansu, the development of cultural tourism has become a top priority project in many regions.

Attracting crowds and wealth, cultural tourism is a leverage that can move mountains with a feather, and those who can wield it know its true value.

However, many people have a misconception that the development of cultural tourism can only be a gift from nature, with the place having beautiful mountains and rivers, distinctive cuisine, and if there are no landscapes or food, at least there should be folk activities that make people scream.

In fact, the possibilities for cultural tourism far exceed many people's imaginations.

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Take Dongguan, for example; you might think it's just a strong manufacturing city, and indeed, its industrial economic map is full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers, but it is also the most popular cultural tourism city in the Greater Bay Area, and its cultural tourism has created a unique "Dongguan style."

If you search for "Dongguan tourism" on Xiaohongshu or TikTok, the places that everyone is now interested in visiting include not only Guanyin Mountain, Huawei Town, Keyuan Museum, and the Opium War Memorial Hall, but also Qiqi Shoe Factory Direct Sales Center, DeRUCCI Sleep Museum, and Taili Rice Discovery Museum.

The manufacturing base in Dongguan has transformed into a bustling tourist destination.

It can be said that by extending the secondary industry to the tertiary industry and combining the leading industrial economy with a profound cultural heritage, Dongguan has transformed its "hard industry" into "soft power" in the practice of developing industrial cultural tourism, and has embarked on a third path of industrial upgrading.

The key to industrial cultural tourism is "industry."

The first keyword of industrial cultural tourism is not cultural tourism, but industry.

Dongguan can take the upgrading path of "industrial cultural tourism" because it has a strong industrial economy as its endorsement.

In the first half of 2024, Dongguan's "report card" is marked with eight big words: the world's factory, steadily moving towards the new.

Looking at the industrial structure, during the report period, the added value of the primary industry in Dongguan was 1.661 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 5.9%; the added value of the secondary industry was 331.078 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.1%; the added value of the tertiary industry was 235.941 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.6%.

The economic figures at least illustrate two issues: first, Dongguan's role as a traditional industrial city remains unchanged; second, when the whole country regards the tertiary industry, especially the cultural tourism service industry, as the "first or second in command" to stimulate consumption and promote economic growth, Dongguan's development of the tertiary industry still needs "an extra boost."

Looking at the first issue, in the first half of 2024, the added value of Dongguan's city-scale industrial enterprises was 251.336 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.0%.

Breaking down by industry, in the "five pillars and four specialties" industries, the electronics and information manufacturing industry grew at a rate of 19.9%, far exceeding packaging printing, chemical manufacturing, and papermaking.

Specifically, smartwatches, routers, 5G mobile phones, and integrated circuits are becoming the main force of Dongguan's export products, with production increases of 135.8%, 96.1%, 33.4%, and 20.6% respectively.

Twenty years ago, Dongguan took over the industrial transfer from Japan and South Korea, relying on the "three comes and one supplement" to form an industrial structure dominated by various simple industrial products such as clothing, toys, shoes, plastic products, and furniture.

Twenty years later, electronic industrial products have become the mainstay of Dongguan's industrial economy, indicating that this export-oriented city has an innately keen sense of smell for global economic changes.

The upgrading and reshuffling of the industry have injected new momentum into Dongguan's foreign trade, but they have also left a question: how should the old industries, old equipment, and old industrial parks that once allowed the people of Dongguan to strike it rich be accepted by the new Dongguan as urban memory?

How can "old school" cultural tourism attract "trendy" consumption?

Let's talk about the second issue.

In the first half of the year, the slow growth of Dongguan's tertiary industry is not because the local cultural heritage is not profound enough.

When it comes to Dongguan's cultural tourism, people often think of the Shilong Zhongshan Road with its forest of arcades, the long-standing Xiangta Street, and the ancient Nan She Ming and Qing ancient villages...

Even if you are not familiar with these concrete expressions of Guangfu culture, at least when it comes to the history of Dongguan, the most impressive thing you can think of must be Lin Zexu's destruction of opium at Humen.

These allusions and Guangfu culture constitute the profound cultural heritage of Dongguan, presenting another side of her that is classical and solemn beyond the "hardcore" industrial city.

However, at the same time, cultural tourism cannot be fully supported by these traces of urban history alone.

Today's cultural tourism work is actually more difficult than ever before, and it requires more opportunities.

Just like Zibo in Shandong, which is also an industrial stronghold, who would have thought that it could become popular overnight with barbecues.

In the context of slow consumption recovery and downgrading, tourism consumption has become one of the few items that young people are willing to spend money on.

Therefore, on social platforms such as TikTok and Weibo, you will find that the official cultural tourism of various places is making great efforts to "revitalize."

Today's young people have a major characteristic in choosing tourist destinations: they want to be able to review the past and know the new.

It is best to have both ancient and cultural towns, allowing young people to temporarily escape from the busy urban life, and also to have various trendy cultural forms such as music festivals, concerts, and talk shows, allowing young people to always enjoy the novelty of "modern life."

This brings another new problem for Dongguan, which has rich cultural old areas and historical heritage resources: how can it grow new ideas in the old urban cultural tourism resources?

The answer to the success of industrial cultural tourism in Dongguan lies in the data of Dongguan's cultural tourism industry in the first half of the year.

In the first half of this year, Dongguan City received 24.3023 million tourists and achieved a tourism revenue of 20.725 billion yuan; the number of inbound tourists increased month by month, with 216,200 inbound tourists received in Dongguan City in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 366.69%.

The prosperity of the cultural tourism industry is half due to 52 music festivals, international film and television animation copyright protection and trade fairs, and other creative activities and creative towns with a strong sense of the times, and half due to the "rejuvenation" of traditional industry, bringing consumer stimulation.

Transforming traditional industrial parks into modern cultural tourism areas is a method for Dongguan to sort out old industrial resources while upgrading industries, and it is also a solution to grow new ideas in old urban cultural tourism resources.

For example, the Houjie Time Creative District located on the side of Dongguan's Guantai Road was the first industrial area of Liaoxia Community in Houjie Town in the 1980s and 1990s.

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