Ancient town tours are becoming more and more popular - taking the "May Day" holiday as an example, Tongcheng Travel data shows that the booking popularity of ancient cities and ancient town scenic spots has increased by more than 4 times year-on-year.
But under the heat, the ancient town is also troubled - "today's ancient town seems to look the same", "from north to south, from east to west, selling the same set of things, it's just lonely"......
The ancient town that has been baptized by the years should be the most local cultural connotation, why is it becoming more and more similar? How can the road of ancient town development be wider and wider? In the past few days, Chao News reporters have visited many ancient towns to explore the reasons behind them.
Jiangnan Ancient Town
Copy-paste creates an "empty shell effect"
For the ancient town, everyone is no stranger. In the 80s of the last century, the rise of "ancient town tours", Zhouzhuang, Lijiang, Fenghuang and so on quickly became a new force in the tourism market, bringing considerable economic benefits. To this day, "Ancient Town Tour" is still a cost-effective travel destination for tourists to get out of the "fast" pace and experience the "slow" life.
In an ancient town, the reporter met a Ms. Chen from Jiangxi. Recently, she was busy on a business trip, so she wanted to go to the ancient town to take a walk and relax. But after walking around, only the bag of soybeans in her hand interested her. "This is made by the local aborigines themselves, and they can't be eaten in Jiangxi. Everything else seems to be much the same. ”
Walking around, the ancient town looks the same, as if carved out of a mold. Lin Ke, a senior lover of ancient towns, also felt deeply. When she was in college, she loved to visit ancient towns, and she visited almost all ancient towns all over the country. At first, she enjoyed the customs of the ancient town. Later, she gradually discovered that in addition to the façade of the ancient town, there was not much difference in the food and play inside.
Nowadays, "squid", "grilled sausage" and "stinky tofu" have become the three old ones in the ancient town, blowing the "wind that misses you", and drinking the "bamboo tube milk tea" with the name of the place is the unified standard. "White walls, black tiles or green bricks and green tiles, plus small bridges and flowing water, take a photo in the ancient town, if you don't hit the landmark, no one will recognize where you are." Lin Ke said that she couldn't feel the unique local culture and tasted the delicious snacks with characteristics, and the sense of loss dispelled her expectations for the ancient town a little bit.
On social media, complaints about the homogenization and over-commercialization of ancient towns can be seen everywhere. The "duplicate check rate" is as high as 99% of the architectural style, and the shops are full of ethnic costumes, handmade silver jewelry, silk products, etc., which can be seen everywhere. The highly similar food and souvenirs made netizens can't help but ridicule "I went to a small commodity city dressed in the coat of an ancient town", and bluntly said "This ancient town will not come again next time".
The ancient town is on fire, but the ancient town with serious "face bumps" gives people a worse sense of experience.
Some industry experts believe that in the process of the development and construction of the ancient town, many places adopt the most labor-saving copy and paste mode, and copy the operation at low cost according to the existing "ancient town template", and make the development of the ancient town into an assembly-line mass production.
Rushing to go shopping, drinking tea and eating, and visiting performances not only make the ancient town a thousand towns, but even a tourist city can emerge three or four "highly homogeneous" ancient towns at the same time.
The ancient town is the same, is there no room for improvement?
"It's not that I don't want to change it, but I can't change it." Xiao Zhen, a staff member who has been engaged in the operation of ancient towns for a long time, told reporters that on the one hand, the foundations of ancient towns across the country are similar. On the other hand, the culture of the ancient town itself should be excavated and displayed, and nothing new can be developed.
Since it can't be mined, if you want to continue traffic, developers are bound to introduce some activities and commercial formats to attract people to play and let people stay.
However, the current cost of replication is very low, once a product is popular, everyone wants to rush to it, make quick money, and do what is popular. "I don't know what to do, it's always right to follow the trend." This is what most merchants think.
Excessive commercialization squeezes the living space of the original culture. "It's not that the culture of the ancient town 'fades', but that the commercial flavor is too strong, and the cultural flavor is covered up." Xiao Zhen added that if tourists are on the move, they will only see all kinds of shops and homogeneous tourism products, but will not be able to appreciate the historical charm and cultural connotation of the ancient town.
Behind the difficulty of improving the ancient town, there are also factors of entanglement of interests of many parties. Since the ancient town is not only a tourist attraction but also a residential area, the properties belong to different subjects, and the property rights are chaotic and difficult to unify. Therefore, generally speaking, the development of tourism in ancient towns mostly takes the form of leasing or collective management.
A merchant told reporters that he also wanted to go to Guzhen to make cultural and creative products, but the developer proposed to return within the time limit, which also blocked some fresh blood who wanted to settle in Guzhen.
"The operation of many ancient towns still maintains traditional operation ideas, and there are shortcomings, which affect the consumption experience and revisit rate of tourists." Industry insiders pointed out that the lack of innovation, the lack of "interactive, experiential, and immersive" scenes, and the insufficient supply of "secondary consumption" have exacerbated the "shell effect" of ancient town scenic spots, making many ancient towns look beautiful but not fun. How to find a balance between culture and commercialization in the development of ancient towns requires further thinking and exploration.
The ancient town should "make new"
Behind the serious homogenization of ancient towns, it is impossible to escape the responsibility of building new ancient towns.
In recent years, new ancient towns in various places have blossomed rapidly like copy and paste. As of 2024, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has announced more than 1,600 characteristic towns, of which more than 50% are tourism-oriented.
There is a large stock of existing ancient towns, so why build new ancient towns? "From the perspective of the overall background, it has a certain relationship with rural revitalization and urban renewal." Deng Zhituan, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with Chao News that many ancient villages and cities will be renovated through the development of ancient towns.
Panlong Ancient Town is the first urban village renovation project in Shanghai. High-end and comfortable are the intuitive feelings of Panlong Ancient Town. The construction of shops is planned and not duplicated, and nearly 20 first stores in Shanghai and the country have settled here. During the May Day period, it attracted more than 850,000 passengers.
The location of Panlong Ancient Town is quite particular, the geographical location is close to the Convention and Exhibition Center, and it is only 2 stops away from Hongqiao Railway Station. The superiority of the geographical location allows the ancient town to have a stable flow of passengers. Looking for a place to eat and walk, Panlong Ancient Town has met the needs of most consumers who come here for "bread and distance". Even on weekdays, there is a lot of foot traffic in the ancient town.
Can the newly built ancient town really drive traffic? "It's not so much about building a new ancient town, it's better to learn how to build a new ancient town." Deng Zhituan analyzed that the reason why the ancient cities (towns) such as Lijiang Old Town and Phoenix Ancient Town were successfully developed and became Internet celebrities was because of their scarcity at that time. "The Panlong Ancient Town breaks through the original ancient city model, although it retains some traces of ancient buildings, but the operation mode is different from the traditional ancient town, more like the shopping mall built in the ancient town, becoming a public activity for citizens to relax and entertain, is a fusion of industry and city integration of the development model of mixed functions." He said.
At present, there are many ancient towns in China, but there are fewer and fewer ancient towns with scarce attributes, such as the ancient city of Pingyao and Liangzhu culture, and the ancient cities (towns) with cultural scarcity can bring their own traffic. Other ancient towns with relatively mediocre qualifications, if they cannot find the core resources and differentiated characteristics of their own development, blindly building ancient towns will inevitably lead to saturation of the demand market.
Where do you find scarcity? "We can consider introducing industries and using the model of 'industry + town' to make blood for the ancient town and strengthen the economy of the ancient town." For example, Deng Zhituan said that Wuzhen combines cutting-edge and novel powerful IP industries such as the Internet and theater festivals to operate the ancient town with industrial thinking, so that Wuzhen can stand out among the ancient towns, find its own track, and attract a steady stream of people to the ancient town, so that Wuzhen has a virtuous circle of sustainable development.
Some people in the industry have proposed that for the ancient towns that have not yet been fully developed, the quality of tourism facilities and tourism services should be improved as much as possible while maintaining the original style; For the fully developed ancient town, how to retain the real antique flavor is the focus of highlighting the charm of differentiated tourism.
Excavating characteristic culture is an important breakthrough, and the ancient town should find unique cultural symbols from its own history and culture.
For example, Guansheng Ancient Town, located in Fancheng District, Xiangyang City, Hubei Province, is characterized by Guangong culture and can be seen everywhere with the imprint of the culture of the Three Kingdoms; In Qintong Ancient Town, Jiangyan District, Taizhou City, Jiangsu Province, on the second day of the Qingming Festival every year, hundreds of boats from four towns and eight towns gather in Shili Qinhu Lake to participate in the annual Qintong Boat Festival......
Whether an ancient city is worth visiting or not, online strategies, experiences, and pit avoidance posts can directly reach tourists. No matter how hard the local promotion is, it is difficult to attract tourists to the ancient towns that lack characteristics and have poor experience. "Even if it has a short-term popularity, over time, it will eventually be voted out by tourists with their feet." Deng Zhituan said that whether it is an ancient city or an ancient town, if it wants to obtain the ability of sustainable development, in addition to traditional protection, it can respond to the development of new quality productivity, such as the need for some new economy, or new technology, new ways to play to empower the ancient town, and can no longer walk on one leg.
The best thing that the ancient town can give us is about the imprint of the years and the enthusiasm for life it has aroused. When "poetry and distance" fade away, when "fireworks in the world" disperse, the breakthrough road of the ancient town has just begun.
Source: Chao News
Author: Deng Zhituan, etc
Editor: Hu Liang
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