Folklore Fascination

Tourism development helps people in remote ethnic areas shake off poverty

- Li Kaizhi

Numerous ancient villages and towns with distinctive ethnic characteristics are scattered across China. Xijiang Qianhu Miao Village is one of them.

Located in Leishan County, Guizhou Province in southwest China, the village, with more than 1,400 households and more than 6,000 people, is the world’s largest village inhabited by people of the Miao ethnic group. Wang Jiawen is a native Miao woman of the village and works as a tour guide in the Xijiang scenic area.

Tourists are attracted to the village not only by the beautiful natural scenery, but also the culture of the Miao ethnic group. That keeps Wang busy. “Sometimes I get four batches of guests a day. Although I’m a little bit tired, it’s all worth it,” Wang said with a smile.

It’s hard to imagine that the village was still dominated by traditional agriculture until 2008, and migrant work was the main source of household income of local villagers. Due to various factors like backward farming techniques and inconvenient transportation, the per-capita annual income of the villagers was as low as 1,700 yuan ($243) before developing tourism. But in 2019, their per-capita annual income reached 23,600 yuan ($3,372).

After more than 10 years of development, Xijiang has become a famous cultural tourism destination, and the poverty alleviation model by developing tourism has become a new approach for targeted poverty alleviation in China.

Scenic area development