"4.8 Million Visitors a Month"... China Boosts 'Sudden Star Tourist Spots' [Beijing Diary]

Zibo→Harbin→Tianshui
Supporting Local Economies with Slow Economic Recovery

Chinese cities seem to have a queue to pass on the crown of "popular tourist destination" in order. Ahead of last year's Qingming Festival holiday, the industrial city of Zibo in Shandong Province suddenly rose to stardom, then around the Ice Lantern Festival earlier this year, Harbin in Heilongjiang Province took over the baton, and now it is the turn of Tianshui, a small city with a population of 3 million.

The pattern of a star city emerging is similar. The media extensively mentions that a particular city is rapidly rising as a popular tourist destination, increasing attention, followed by news of train and airplane ticket sales to that city surging by several hundred percent. But as everyone knows, most Chinese cities were frozen by the government's zero-COVID policy from 2020 to 2022. Even a slight movement causes numbers to jump due to the base effect. However, based on these "objective numbers," interest breeds more interest, and people flock to the star city as if hypnotized.

People are passing by Tian Shui's Malatang billboard. (Photo by Baidu)

Interestingly, this popularity does not last more than half a year and quickly shifts to another city. Of course, seasonal factors that match the city's characteristics or limits of interest could be reasons. But the speculation that cities waiting their turn are artificially lining up also has persuasive power. Recently, Chinese state media has been fueling this by quoting various experts saying, "The current trend in Chinese travel is small cities." Zibo and Tianshui are names hardly known to foreigners.

Is it an overreach to say that China's economic recession underlies this? Just looking at the fact that places with relatively weaker economic capabilities, including GDP, are rising as star cities suggests so. Zibo, a small city with a population of 4.7 million (a moderately famous city usually has at least 10 million people), has no known historic sites. Without the government's and media's support, it would have had no strength to revive its economy crippled by zero-COVID on its own. Its initial popularity came from promoting "Zibo barbecue," where lamb skewers costing only 2 yuan each (about 370 won) are wrapped with various vegetables in pancakes. Just for this wrap, 4.8 million tourists visited Zibo in March last year, more than the number of residents.

In the case of Harbin, it is the capital of Heilongjiang Province and a fairly large city with a population of 10 million. Last year, Harbin's GDP was 557.6 billion yuan, ranking first in Heilongjiang Province, but in absolute terms, disposable income did not exceed 30,000 yuan. The massive Ice Lantern Festival, which operates only during the winter season, must have been an unmissable event for the local government.

What about the emerging star Tianshui? Gansu Province, where Tianshui is located, has a per capita disposable income of 25,011 yuan (as of 2023, about 4.66 million won), the lowest nationwide. This is only about one-third of Shanghai's 84,834 yuan, which ranks first. Tianshui itself, which flourished in the early 2000s due to past thermal power plants and mining development, is now just a small city with a GDP of about 85.7 billion yuan. Tianshui, which now boils malatang with thermal power that once led economic development. While curious about how that tastes, personally, I am more interested in which place will take over the baton next.