Culture, sea view, and food are better than Quanzhou in Xiamen next door, and this time it finally ushered in a bumper harvest of tourism, reproducing the long-lost "Maritime Silk Road" grand scene.
Written by丨Wei Yingjie
When I returned to my hometown this time, I was caught off guard by the grand occasion of the fire of Quanzhou tourism out of the circle.
I should have thought of it when I bought the ticket. At that time, I didn't grab the ticket half a month in advance, and then I bought the high-speed rail from Shanghai to Xiamen, and then got on the train at Hangzhou East Railway Station, so I got the ticket for the outgoing trip.
The hotel stay also took me by surprise.
I also booked a hotel half a month in advance, opened the app, and found that the Quanzhou hotel I was used to living in before had no room at all. After going around in a big circle, I still found my old classmates, and then I booked a guest house at the university.
I didn't expect to find out after returning home that I had to report every time I entered the university, and it would be extremely troublesome if I didn't have a car. So I found a friend again, booked another hotel before the second day of the Lunar New Year (there were no rooms on the whole line from the second day of the new year), and stayed temporarily. I thought to myself, I really can't do it, I can only go home and live.
Later, I changed to a hotel, and the original price of a room of more than 300 soared to 950 yuan. Even a very dilapidated and convenient hotel in front of my house is usually estimated to be one or two hundred, and it has risen by several hundred.
That's actually pretty good. Some friends wanted to play in Quanzhou when they were close to the Spring Festival, and they were immediately scared off when they checked the hotel**. Not to mention that within a radius of dozens of miles, hotels as far as Jinjiang and Hui'an have been booked, which is also staggering.
There is also a taxi, during the whole festival, every time I have to open AutoNavi and Didi at the same time, and select almost all models before placing an order, so it is still difficult to get a car, and I often have to increase the price and reward. When I got a taxi, it was either a bit far away or the waiting time was a bit long.
I feel that this Spring Festival, I am either taking a taxi or waiting for a car to come.
Quanzhou West Street (photo by Yan Feng).
The amount of various Internet celebrity snack bars, not to mention. In addition to the stores that do not plan to do tourist business and are closed during the Spring Festival, such as the "Beef Restaurant" at the North Gate, the "Aqiu Steak Restaurant" on Tumen Street (I only knew about it after eating the closed door), what "Watergate Guozai Noodle Batter" and "Haochengcai Steak Restaurant", they are all crowded, and a long queue is waiting at the door.
Although the experience was a little unsatisfactory, I was still happy for my hometown. Culture, sea view, and food are better than Quanzhou in Xiamen next doorThis time it is finally ushered in a bumper harvest of tourism, and the long-lost "Maritime Silk Road" scene is reproduced.
After checking the data, the Quanzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism introduced that it is estimated that the city will receive a total of 818 tourists during the Spring Festival holiday in 2024120,000 person-times, an increase of 159 over the same period of the previous year on a comparable basis4%, an increase of 1406%；Achieve tourism revenue of 801.8 billion yuan, an increase of 243 percent over the same period last year on a comparable basis3%, an increase of 143 over the same period in 20193%, and the number of tourists received and the total tourism revenue reached a record high.
In comparison, according to the Sanya Municipal Bureau of Tourism and Cultural Affairs, during the Spring Festival holiday this year (February 9 to February 16), the total number of tourists received in the city was 248140,000 person-times, a year-on-year increase of 3462%, and the total tourism income is 749.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3467%。
As a native of southern Fujian, who doesn't want to see their hometown lively and prosperous? In particular, for me, a wanderer who has been adrift for more than 20 years, the word hometown has become more and more mellow and intense.
I often half-jokingly say that it was only after I left Quanzhou that I really understood the awesomeness of Quanzhou.
This is no joke at all. In that year, Quanzhou Port was planned to be merged into Meizhou Port, which caused a lot of excitement, and I wrote an article in the "Oriental Morning Post" "The Historical and Cultural Identity Behind the "Quanzhou Port", talking about the multicultural beauty of Quanzhou.
Within a few hundred meters of a street, gather the Confucian Confucian Confucian Temple, the Islamic Temple (Qingjing Temple) and the Taoist Guanyue Temple, which can be described as rare, if the range is expanded a little more, walk less than 2 kilometers, you can also walk to the Kaiyuan Temple of the West Street or the Tianhou Temple of the South Gate, and there are ** churches (Quannan Church) and Catholic Churches (Flower Lane) that were built more recently. Quanzhou people who grew up in such a cultural atmosphere may be born with a culturally diverse "factory setting".
I'm ashamed that I still don't dare to say that I understand Quanzhou. Although I was born and raised in Sri Lanka, I increasingly felt that my understanding of the city's history and culture was limited.
When I was young, I used to lie on the big stone slab of Luoyang Bridge to blow the sea breeze (at that time, there was still a layer of concrete bridge deck built in the ** period on the old stone slab bridge in the Song Dynasty), but I knew very little about the origin of this bridge; I once climbed the stone tower of Kaiyuan Temple, but I didn't know anything about the stone carvings of the niches; I once sat on the back seat of my father's Jialing motorcycle and followed him to watch the drama in the four towns and five miles, but I didn't understand the difference between Gaojia opera and Liyuan opera......
Scenery of Luoyang Bridge in Quanzhou (picture glacier).
Tell a joke that happened to me. When I was a child, I knew that there was a custom in the village called "Matsuri Shiban", which is said to be held every ten years, so it was even more lively than "Pudu" (another custom).
At that time, of course, I was ignorant of what the "Ten Classes of Sacrifice" was, thinking that it was just like "Pudu", it was a feudal superstitious activity. Because in our hometown, both of them are to invite guests to dinner and sing on stage.
Later, I don't know if it was a statement I heard from **, maybe it was said by the old people in the village, maybe I saw it from a miscellaneous book, saying that the custom of "sacrificing ten classes" was related to the fight against "Japanese devils", I only remember that I was surprised when I heard it, but I didn't expect to check the authenticity, so I remembered it in a daze for many years. It wasn't until I talked about it recently that I was exposed and laughed at by my friends.
It turned out that the custom of "sacrificing ten classes" was indeed unique to the village where I was born and several surrounding villages (ten classes means ten villages, the actual number may vary), and the reason was to commemorate the villagers who died in the east of Quanzhou during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty to resist the invasion of the Japanese invaders.
Japanese devils are indeed Japanese devils, but they were Japanese devils more than 400 years ago. The reason why there is a saying that it is once every ten years is because this memorial ceremony is performed by the villages that participated in the anti-Japanese war in turn.
This is a very unique, regional memorial event. Speaking of which, the object of the memorial service is the ancestors who died hundreds of years ago in the anti-Japanese war, and I live in such a tradition without knowing it, how can I not be ashamed.
At a dinner after returning to my hometown, I joked to the real "Quanzhou Tong" Xiaofeng brother that I lived for 50 years before I began to understand my father and my hometown. That's true.
Because of this, in recent years, I have been very keen to introduce Quanzhou and tell people about the goodness of Quanzhou. For the popularity of Quanzhou tourism, it is natural to have a happy attitude.
In fact, for this tourism boom, the relevant parties in Quanzhou also have a response planFor example, in order to alleviate the shortage of transportation capacity, during the Spring Festival, a daily subsidy of 100 yuan will be given to the normal operation of taxi (online car-hailing) drivers, and at the same time, the implementation of free public transportation.
In addition, in order to curb the phenomenon of stealing customers, it is stipulated that the noodle batter and hairpin are not allowed. These are what I learned from talking to taxi drivers and local friends, and there may be other measures that I don't know about.
These measures have indeed worked. In the days I was in my hometown, I ate noodle batter until I walked against the wall, and it didn't cost much money. Except for the hotel**, there is not much to be done, including entrance fees and taxis.
However, after all, the passenger reception capacity of a city is placed here, and it is difficult to completely alleviate it in a short period of time. For example, if the capacity used to be 100,000 people at full capacity, now 150,000 people suddenly come, and it will definitely be too busy all of a sudden.
Most of the so-called "influencer cities" will encounter similar problems. This is also a serious challenge for tourist destination cities. The so-called "xx is a city where you can come if you want to come, but it is not a city where you can walk if you say you can go", and in some places, a return ticket can easily cost tens of thousands of yuan, and the problem is here.
Kaiyuan Temple in Quanzhou (photo by Zhou Xiaoqin).
In this regard, the sudden popularity of a city can be a good thing, but it can also become a bad thing if you are not careful. Under the overload, the tourists' sense of experience and satisfaction will be reduced to varying degrees, and if the service is not in place, soaring or even stealing customers, it will affect the reputation of a city.
What's more, no matter where tourists travel at present, they can't help but have a kind of "gold owner" mentality, thinking that they have brought consumption to this place, and they will be "spoiled". The cultural and tourism bureaus around the country have "scored", and they are also all kinds of fancy sets, and what "little potatoes", "princesses" and "young masters" are here.
In this atmosphere, tourists' travel expectations are inevitably raised, and once there is a gap, it is inevitable to "enlarge the move" - take pictures, record ** and post them on the Internet.
We have a well-known steakhouse in our local area, and it is said that it has been complained by tourists about the poor service attitude before, and there has been a lot of trouble. However, as a regular customer who has been shopping at this store for more than 20 years, to be fair, the owner and the guys of this store, I have never seen them have a good face. The customers who come here are also here for the food, and they don't seem to care if the restaurant is smiling or not.
As long as the steak is delicious, **really, who came to see the store's face? This may be a cultural difference.
However, this "personal experience" of Quanzhou out of the circle has corrected some of my previous thoughts.
In the past, Zibo, Harbin and other places became Internet celebrity cities, although I am not disgusted, but I feel a little "not doing business". The main reason for this is that the proportion of tourism revenue in the local area is not high, and the sustainability is suspicious. "Becoming popular for a while" is only helpful to improve the city's popularity, and after the uproar, it is inevitable that there will be chicken feathers.
This time in Quanzhou, I saw more details.
On the bright side, tourism income is not high. For example, Quanzhou's total tourism revenue, which hit a record high during the Spring Festival holiday, is only 8 billion yuan, which is not worth mentioning compared to its annual GDP of trillions of yuan. However, the gold content of this tourism income is not low, and it directly benefits taxi (online car-hailing) drivers, catering industry, hotels and other service industry personnel, bringing real income to this part of the population.
For example, the fee for making hairpins in Xunpu is 40 yuan, and a Xunpu woman can easily earn 400 yuan if she makes 10 hairpins a day. There are also taxi drivers whose business is becoming more and more difficult to do, although they have given up holidays, but they can get ** and platform subsidies, and they can't finish the orders every day, which is not a small supplement for them. I talked to the drivers about this topic and they agreed.
The B&Bs and hotels that suffered a lot in the past two years were finally able to take a breath and earn back some money this time. A friend of mine opened a homestay in Quanzhou for a few years, but in the first two years, he couldn't survive the mask period and closed down. But I didn't expect that now Quanzhou has ushered in a tourism explosion, which is really regrettable.
Quanzhou Tonghuai Guanyue Temple (photo Yan Feng).
And that's just visible income, actuallyWhen tourism flourishes in a place, it can indirectly drive many industries and businesses. For example, the sale of souvenirs, local products, clothes, as well as house decoration, leasing and other various consumptions on the street will not be included in the tourism income, but they are also the real benefits brought by the tourism boom.
When I returned to my hometown this time, I also found that tourism can actually improve the civilization level of a city. Like the steakhouse mentioned above, there are still few (this store is not open during the Spring Festival), and most of the shops that are oriented to tourists are very welcoming, and they do not deceive customers and do not increase prices. Quanzhou itself is a place where the small commodity economy is very developed, and tourists are the main customers when they come, which does not need to be popularized at all.
This kind of warm hospitality is actually the premise of a city's transformation into a tourism economy. Only when the local people are really good to tourists, and tourists can also feel the fun of free and easy travel, without worrying about falling into the consumption trap from time to time, such a two-way rush can achieve each other. Otherwise, no matter how hot the city is, it will only be a gust of wind.
Therefore, I now think that it is not a bad thing for a city to be on fire, and the key depends on how the local people catch this "pouring wealth".