Villages should stay true to themselves

In a work conference on rural tourism convened by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Longyan, Fujian province, last week, the ministry urged the local government to refrain from large-scale demolition and construction projects that wipe out the historical and regional traits of old villages.

Local governments should heed the suggestion as it exposes an acute problem with rural tourism.

Many old buildings in villages, which not only carry the collective memory of the villagers but also reflect the local culture, are being demolished to give way to mundane parodies, and tourism agencies and companies rent the villagers' homes to sell mass-produced souvenirs and fast food to visitors.

So a weekend outing to a village is now a weird urban experience in the countryside rather than an idyllic escape from the city. What travelers experience is no longer fresh air, quiet villages, homemade food and welcoming farmers, but traffic jams, noisy shops, standardized homestays and professional merchants which many places leverage as a means to realize rural revitalization.

The development of the tourism industry should not come at the cost of sacrificing local characteristics, culture and historical traditions.

Villages should attach great significance to protecting their local characteristics that distinguish one village from another.

The construction of new buildings in villages must balance development and protection. And the villagers should try to maintain their traditional lifestyle and protect the village way of life while developing tourism. Otherwise, the villages will become only homogeneous hollow shells selling exactly the same experience.

Local governments should pay more attention to protecting the intangible cultural heritage of the villages than to constructing new buildings.

Also, they should offer training to the farmers to improve their skills and abilities to manage their business, and cater to the personalized demands of travelers, and deepen their understanding of tourism and how to present the local culture, so that they can benefit from the boom in rural tourism and cultivate their comparative competitiveness.