Henan Xiuwu: Exploring the "Aesthetic Path of Common Prosperity"

Original title: Henan Xiuwu: Exploring the "Aesthetic Path of Common Prosperity"

China Culture Daily reporter Li Cheng

In 2020, when the new crown pneumonia epidemic broke out and global tourism was cold, the annual number of tourists received by Xiuwu County in Jiaozuo City, Henan Province, still exceeded the 10 million mark, with more than 5 million overnight tourists, the total income of cultural tourism was 4.351 billion yuan, and 1/4 of the poor people in the county achieved poverty alleviation with the help of aesthetic economy.

In recent years, Xiuwu County, known as the "source of county aesthetics", is driven by aesthetic design, driven by aesthetic projects, promotes the construction of beautiful villages, uses aesthetics as a driving engine, and realizes aesthetic realization through aesthetic transformation. At present, Xiuwu has formed 104 boutique country houses, 2803 beds of 6 homestay clusters, the annual comprehensive income of 110 million yuan, effectively get rid of the scarcity of high-quality country houses in the north, the county's rural and homestay tourism and other pan-tourism industries to receive tourists with an average annual growth rate of 46%.

Recently, this reporter interviewed Guo Peng, member of the Standing Committee of the Jiaozuo Municipal Party Committee and executive vice mayor of Henan Province, to discuss the theoretical choices, landing practices, and development models behind the practice of martial arts aesthetics, and to provide replicable and generalizable martial arts training experience for other counties across the country.

From "black economy" to "green economy"

Q: What experience does Xiuwu provide for rural revitalization?

Answer: The fact that XiuwuDa Nanpo Village went from a rich village that dug coal to a poor village with depleted resources shows that the road to economic development at the expense of the environment is not long. In 2019, the Great South Slope and the nearby Yuntai Mountain achieved a comprehensive tourism income of 4.603 billion yuan through the development model of "tourism + finance + homestay + poverty alleviation", accounting for 30.6% of GDP.

Similar to many underdeveloped areas in the central and western regions, xiuwu with a population of less than 250,000, small industrial enterprises, low level of science and technology, and unrealistic short-term leapfrog growth. At the same time, Xiuwu is located in the mountainous area of Henan, a major grain-producing province, with a hollowed-out and serious aging in the countryside, shouldering the heavy responsibility of national food security and ecological barriers, and limited industrial land and environmental capacity.

To achieve leapfrog development of the county, the only way out for Xiuwu is to activate and realize the rich local cultural and ecological resources. XiuWu spent 5 years to realize the realization of cultural and ecological resources, explore the aesthetic path of common prosperity, and provide an easy-to-operate, replicable and promoteable aesthetic program for counties with weak industrial foundation but rich historical, cultural and ecological resources in the vast central and western regions of the country, that is, to explore the "aesthetic path of common prosperity" led by aesthetics and explore the realization of cultural and ecological resource values for the whole people.

Aesthetic monetization

Q: From beauty to beauty industry, what is the path to realize aesthetics realization, and what is the current harvest of Xiuwu?

A: The transformation from aesthetics to economy is a process of monetization of resources and traffic. Through the realization of cultural and ecological resources, Xiuwu is moving towards leapfrog development.

Red culture monetizes. Since 2016, with the "going up to the mountains and going to the countryside" of aesthetic talents, Xiuwu has broken through the problem from red cultural resources, used aesthetics to transform the village-level party building position, started from the unified logo and font of "the people first, the Communist Party is good", to the position architecture, indoor color collocation, and then to the optimization of the function of the party building position. After the renovation, the Diecai Cave Spirit Memorial Hall and the former site of the Xiuwu Central County Committee are solemn and solemn, and the sense of beauty is extremely strong. After the sleeping red resources were awakened by aesthetics, the beauty of the party building position brought the beauty of organizational life and the behavior of party members, and the cohesion and combat effectiveness of rural party organizations were further enhanced. The number of active party members in Dawei Village has increased from 2 to 43 per year. The 83 villagers in Shaqiang Village spontaneously raised more than 2 million yuan and built a party building position of mass fundraising. Designed by Zhou Shi, a designer who graduated from Harvard University, the Qinchang Communist Faith Home welcomes more than a thousand tourists to visit the card experience every day, driving the village's collective economy to increase its income by 500,000 yuan per year.

Rural culture is monetized. Under the premise of ensuring the supply of grain, important agricultural products and ecological barriers, and taking the opportunity to create a "national model county for new urbanization and rural construction actions", we explored and formed a party building as the guide, with the introduction of high-level talent teams, mass mobilization, and diversified capital investment as the means, and the aesthetic design and value realization of 5 rural cultures such as rural natural features, rural architecture, and rural folklore as the way to achieve "retaining nostalgia, inheriting the context, mobilizing the enthusiasm of indigenous people, aesthetic education of the whole people and relative balance between input and output" The "1355" rural revitalization aesthetic path of the five major visions.

Monetization of traditional culture. Since 2020, Xiuwu has aimed at the huge hanfu consumer group of young people, and through aesthetic design and content refinement, it has empowered "Hanfu Town", "Hanfu Festival that never ends", "Hanfu Flower Festival", etc., and has attracted 500,000 tourists offline to punch in and consume, and more than 2.6 million people have paid attention to Xiuwu through various live broadcast platforms, initially completing the industrial chain layout of "China's Hanfu Capital".

Ecological resources are upgraded and monetized. With the aesthetic economy as the starting point, the scenic spot has made every effort to promote 16 "cloud series" scenic spot transformation projects with a total investment of 20 billion yuan. At the same time, with scenic spots as the center, Xiuwu focuses on six aspects, such as infrastructure construction, human settlement environment improvement, and digital agriculture and rural areas, and integrates aesthetic and artistic elements into 103 rural revitalization projects with a total investment of 72.4 billion yuan, such as "four good rural roads", mine restoration and governance, and pastoral complex construction, to achieve global aesthetics and experience upgrades.

Enter the Wake-up Password

Q: What kind of way is it to promote the aesthetic guidance mechanism of rural revitalization at the county level, and what is the relationship between the government, designers, foreign capital and villagers?

A: Xiuwu's path to promoting the aesthetic economy in the county is mainly divided into three steps.

The first step is to excavate and awaken the sleeping resources of the county through the aesthetic perspective. Xiuwu has inherited more than 3,000 years of historical context and natural resource endowments, just like a sleeping rich mine, when the "awakening password" of the aesthetic economy is imported, it can inspire incredible contemporary value.

At the same time, the establishment of aesthetic work study exchanges, aesthetic project observation and evaluation and other 5 mechanisms, collation and discussion of 30 issues of more than 350 national excellent development examples, the county opera, stories, ancient roads, ancient buildings, traditional crafts and other classifications and improvement, the establishment of aesthetic economic resource library, through the county-level leadership, township-level classification, village-level demonstration, the formation of a strong atmosphere of "catching up with learning, open competition and dark competition".

The second step is to create a small aesthetic building and build a core attraction for tourism. In 2019, Xiuwu County was successfully selected as one of the first batch of national global tourism demonstration zones, and in the process of creating in the past 3 years, by inviting well-known designers to create aesthetic building complexes and tipping points in the county, forming a network layout of global boutique small buildings and surrounding formats, opening up a traffic port for the aesthetic economy.

The third step is to develop aesthetic products and aesthetic IP to enhance the experience and added value. After the global tourism supported by aesthetic architecture drains the county, we gradually tilt our focus to the development of aesthetic products and aesthetic IP, and enhance the economic benefits brought by aesthetics by polishing more product content. At the same time, compared with the scale and standardization of urban products, Xiuwu highlights the local heritage and localization attributes in the creation of aesthetic products and aesthetic IP, and has won a differentiated competitive advantage with county characteristics.

In practice, there are three lessons.

The first is to pay more attention to digital marketing. Through the flexible use of Internet thinking, promote the e-commerce empowerment plan, build an e-commerce live broadcast town, cultivate "net red" village broadcasters, and create a tipping point for aesthetic product marketing.

The second is to pay more attention to the retail experience. Taking Xiuwu's Songhua Egg Workshop as an example, on the one hand, we develop online sales channels such as online live broadcasting; on the other hand, we carry out offline Songhua egg non-genetic inheritance skills experience services, etc., through online and offline integrated sales, the annual sales volume of Songhua eggs is 30 million pieces, and the sales volume exceeds 60 million yuan.

The third is to pay more attention to cooperation with professional teams. Only by combining strong and powerful products can we sell products at a good price, so that the people can benefit from aesthetic products and strengthen the confidence in the development of aesthetic economy.

Villagers actively participate

Q: How to let the people really benefit from aesthetic practice?

Answer: In the practice of martial arts training, the focus of what we do is to let the people really feel the sense of spiritual and experiential gain from the promotion of aesthetic culture. At the same time, we should plan aesthetic formats, combine the strength of the government, social capital, designers and rural people, and use the aesthetic economy to benefit the local people and truly produce benefits. At the operational level, we have grasped three key points.

First, let more grassroots cadres deeply realize that aesthetics is an important resource of the countryside, take aesthetics as the core to create rural natural landscapes and agricultural products, become the core competitiveness of rural areas different from other cities, and enhance economic benefits.

Second, mobilize more social forces, designers, and rural construction workers to devote themselves to the aesthetic-led rural revitalization, so that they can design landmark buildings that can reflect the characteristics of Xiuwu region and truly have core competitiveness, so that the historical and cultural resources that Have been sleeping for thousands of years in Xiuwu can be "alive" and ignited.

Third, through successful examples, mobilize villagers to actively participate in aesthetic economic projects, bring employment opportunities and increase income to villagers.

Journalist's Note

In the past 10 years of practice, Xiuwu County has taken the aesthetic economy as the starting point, accurately grasped the "construction of a beautiful China" and "carry forward the spirit of Chinese aesthetic education", from the beauty of party building and service to the beauty of scenic spots, the beauty of homestays, the beauty of highways, the beauty of urban construction, the beauty of industry, and the beauty of rural areas, which has spawned one aesthetic highlight after another.

Nowadays, Xiuwu's aesthetic empowerment of rural revitalization practice is no longer a lonely move forward, Xiuwu has formed a "county aesthetic alliance" with many counties inside and outside Henan Province, and reached a consensus on the development of aesthetic economy, and more counties will embark on the road of developing aesthetic economy in the future.

At present, China has shifted from a comprehensive victory in poverty alleviation to a comprehensive promotion of rural revitalization. Intervening in rural revitalization and development in a beautiful way not only satisfies people's spiritual needs, but also excavates and awakens the sleeping resources of the countryside with aesthetic productivity or high-quality design, so as to achieve prosperity and prosperity. The practice of xiuwu proves that aesthetic aesthetic education has great space and great achievements in the vast countryside.

Source: China Culture Daily