Xi Jinping inspires revolutionary tourism

Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Shaanxi Province on Feb. 13, 2015. (Photo: Xinhua)

Sites linked to CPC history experience larger crowds after leader's visit

Liangjiahe village in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province has seen its largest ever number of tourists during the Spring Festival, following President Xi Jinping's visits to tourist attractions in the region related to the Communist Party of China's (CPC) revolutionary past.

Between February 13 and 15, Xi and his wife toured Liangjiahe, the city of Tongchuan and Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, Xi was sent to Liangjiahe in 1969, when millions of urban students and intellectuals were moved to rural areas as part of the national "go the mountainous area and the countryside" movement.

Xi joined the Party while living in the village in 1974 and led the local production team.

In recent years, about 100,000 tourists visited Liangjiahe village in Yan'an annually.

Xi's trip to some of Shaanxi's revolutionary historical sites "demonstrated that the CPC will not forget who they were and where they started … The Party could draw more power from its roots as the nation deepens reform," according to an article published in the People's Daily.

The local tourism authority said that about 7,600 tourists visited the Revolutionary Memorial Hall in Yan'an on Saturday, an increase of 63 percent over last year, according to the news portal chinanews.com.

Yan'an is famous for being the CPC's primary base from 1935 until 1948.

"People came to visit these old revolutionary base areas not only because of President Xi but also for the special political meanings of these places," an official surnamed Liu from Revolutionary Memorial Hall in Yan'an told the Global Times.

As the so-called "red tourism" has grown in Shaanxi following Xi's visit, some travel agencies are planning to add the places President Xi recently visited to their so-called "red tourism" routes which offer tourists a chance to see places that are significant to the history of Chinese communism, according to an employee surnamed Yu from a travel agency in Xi'an.

This is not the first time that places where President Xi visited have become hot spots for Chinese tourists.

After President Xi went to the Maldives, Chinese travel agencies promoted trips to the Maldives that included the same hotel where the top leader stayed and the same tour route, the Legal Mirror reported on September 22, 2014.

According to data collected by aoyou.com, a site dedicated to collecting tourist data, and China's leading travel agency Ctrip, inquires about Xi's tour route grew more than 40 percent after his visit and the number of visitors to the Maldives doubled during the National Day holiday in 2014 compared with the previous year.