Cultural tourism promoted at global fair in Shenzhen

The 17th China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair hosted an investment attraction conference offering a new platform for different regions to promote their cultural tourism on Friday.

It was the first time for the fair, which opened on Sept 23 and ended on Monday, had held such an event. The conference aimed to help the fair further play a role in improving quality cultural projects, local media reported.

Wang Qiang, head of the Shenzhen publicity department, said the fair has become an influential and effective exhibition for the domestic cultural industry.

Hosting the investment attraction conference better utilizes the profile of the fair to serve the new development pattern－taking the domestic market as a mainstay while enabling the domestic and international markets to interact positively with each other, he said.

Shenzhen is promoting its cultural sector to create better quality and more economic benefits, Wang said.

Representatives from Jiangsu, Hubei and Yunnan provinces, the Tibet autonomous region and Shenzhen's Futian, Nanshan and Longgang districts promoted their cultural industry policies and cultural projects at the event. They also shared their investment success stories.

Wang Jianghong, deputy head at the Yunnan Culture and Tourism Department, promoted the province's cultural tourism investment fields.

Yunnan boasts beautiful scenery ranging from rain forests to plateaus and has a diverse climate biodiversity.

It is home to 26 ethnic groups among which 15 are unique to the province. The government wants to develop 160 cultural tourist attractions and provide 80 quality cultural tourism routes, Wang said. Another plan is to build 88 historically cultural cities, towns, villages and blocks which are popular among visitors.

Ten festival events in the province are being highlighted to promote Yunnan. Among them are the water-splashing festival of the Dai ethnic group and the Luoping International Canola Flower Culture Tourism Festival. The province integrates tourism with intangible cultural heritage, Wang said. It depends on 85 traditionally ethnic culture and ecology conservation areas to foster intangible cultural heritage tourism and study centers, and offers related performances including folk songs from Laodabao, a remote ethnic Lahu village in Yunnan.

Shenzhen's Nanshan district introduced its exhibition resources at the fair. Nanshan is home to more than 800 large cultural companies, nearly 70 percent of which are digital creative ones.

Eight cultural tourism projects were made into signed agreements at the conference, involving investment totaling nearly 3.2 billion yuan ($495.4 million). China Film Group signed a cooperation memorandum with a Beijing-based publishing and media company for a documentary project.

Shenzhen's Overseas Chinese Town Holdings, also known as OCT Group, signed strategic cooperation agreements with a Pu'er tea company and a cultural industry investment enterprise from Yunnan for modern agriculture development and distinctive cultural town projects.

songmengxing@chinadaily.com.cn