Xinhua News Agency, Shenyang, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- Visiting Northeast China for the Chinese New Year has become a new fashion for Chinese tourism.
Xinhua News Agency reporters Xu Yang and Ding Feibai.
With a long whistle, more than 200 tourists took the Y535 ice and snow version of the "Meihe" tourist train at Shenyang North Railway Station to Meihekou City, Jilin Province to start the ice and snow journey. Most of them came from other provinces to experience the charm of ice and snow in the Northeast.
In China, "how to spend the Spring Festival this year" is the most talked about topic right now. Unlike most people who chose to go to the warm south for the New Year, driven by the "Erbin effect", a large number of southern tourists chose the Northeast as a destination for New Year tourism.
According to reports released by multiple travel platforms, ice and snow tourism has become the most popular theme during this year's Spring Festival holiday.
According to Tuniu's 2024 Spring Festival Tourism Consumption** Report, group tours during the Spring Festival holidays in Harbin, Changbaishan, Yabuli, and Mohe were basically sold out in mid-December 2023. In previous years, related tourism products would not be sold out until three weeks before the Chinese New Year. At the same time, some niche destinations in Northeast China, such as Hegang, Qitaihe, Yichun, Jixi and Heihe, have also become emerging tourist cities during the Spring Festival, attracting many young tourists.
Li Yan, 32, a native of Chongqing who works in Shanghai, used to grab a train ticket back to his hometown as soon as possible during the Spring Festival.
The content of returning to my hometown for the New Year is similar every year: eating Chinese New Year's Eve, visiting relatives and meeting friends, and the Spring Festival holiday is over. Li Yan said.
After seeing many southern tourists traveling to Harbin, he was also moved, "I have never seen ice sculptures and such a big snow, and this year I decided to take my family to the Northeast to celebrate the New Year in a different way."
Tongcheng travel data shows that during this year's Spring Festival, among the popular destinations for railway travel, Harbin's popularity ranking jumped from 16th in the same period in 2023 to second; In terms of domestic routes, the popularity of the Guangzhou-Harbin route was **288% year-on-year, the popularity of Shenzhen-Harbin was **166%, and the popularity of Hangzhou-Harbin was **110%. Changchun, Shenyang and other major cities in Northeast China also saw a significant year-on-year increase in passenger flow.
For the new trend of this year's Spring Festival, various departments have made targeted adjustments. Shanghai Railway Station has added passenger trains to Harbin West Railway Station, Qiqihar Station, Ulanhot Station and Changchun Station, which is the first time that Shanghai Railway Station has added passenger trains to the northeast in recent years. Hangzhou Airport encrypts routes to Shenyang, Harbin, Changchun and other eastern provinces; Shandong has newly opened and encrypted to Shenyang, Dalian, Mudanjiang, Changbai Mountain, Yanji and other Northeast ice and snow tour routes.
According to the person in charge of the northern branch of China Southern Airlines, in order to better meet the needs of passengers, the company has increased capacity investment on Shenyang-Shanghai (Pudong)-Shenyang, Shenyang-Hangzhou-Shenyang, Shenyang-Guangzhou-Shenyang and other routes, and adjusted some flights to wide-body passenger aircraft.
Relevant experts believe that behind the ice and snow fever in this year's Spring Festival is the continuous development of China's ice and snow industry in recent years. According to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games Legacy Case Report Collection (2022) released in early 2023, from 2018 to 2020, China's ice and snow tourism heavy asset investment projects amounted to nearly 900 billion yuan.
Ice and snow are also invaluable assets", which has also had a profound impact on China's ice and snow market. In the "14th Five-Year Plan", the three northeastern provinces have strengthened the layout of the ice and snow economy.
Jilin Province has included ice and snow and summer leisure eco-tourism in the "three trillion-level" industries during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period; Liaoning Province plans to achieve an output value of more than 5 billion yuan in the ice and snow equipment manufacturing industry by 2025; Heilongjiang Province has made it clear that by 2025, it will build a number of national and provincial ski tourism resorts, and cultivate a number of internationally competitive ice and snow enterprises and well-known brands.
Cheng Chaogong, chief researcher of Tongcheng Research Institute, said that the ice and snow fever not only made the Chinese New Year in Northeast China a new fashion for Spring Festival tourism, but also brought market benefits to the Northeast region, and also gave the outside world a new understanding of Northeast China. If the local government seizes the opportunity to transform "flow" into "retention", it will promote the overall development of the regional economy.
*:Xinhua.