These days, Zhang Yuhong has been busy on a livestreaming platform promoting the ice and snow tourism products of her hometown in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.
The 47-year-old, who runs a homestay business, is the wife of a former staff member at a forest farm in Wuchang city of Heilongjiang. Sandwiched in between two mountains and with a river flowing through it, the village provides a place where forest workers and their families live.
In 2009, when logging was completely banned in the forest farm, there was an urgent need for almost all of the forest workers to secure alternative employment opportunities, recalled Guo Junru, former Party chief of the forest farm. Because they had often encountered visitors to the village, including outdoor and photography enthusiasts within the village’s vicinity, the locals decided to build a winter hiking route along the nearby mountainous roads.
The forest farm is only 15 km from the Xuexiang (Snow Town) National Forest Park, with the area experiencing seven months of snow every year, and with the average annual snowfall standing at nearly 2 meters.
Before the winter season started in 2004, Zhang and her husband used their savings to renovate their house in preparation for opening a new homestay business. During the winter season, the couple earned 50,000 yuan. Having realized that their homestay turned out to be a profitable business, other residents also started to get engaged in the same business.
In 2010, a snow scenic area was established in the locality. Thanks to this new attraction, the local infrastructure was improved and local residents were encouraged to open their own homestay businesses and get involved in the ice and snow tourism industry. Nowadays, the 15 km hiking trail has become a popular site for tourists visiting the scenic area.
The scenic area is able to receive about 5,000 tourists on a daily basis. “With a total of 126 households in the village, 111 are running homestay businesses, restaurants or supermarkets,” said Guo. After he retired in 2019, Guo had planned to move to the city, but his wife insisted that they should instead stay in the village. Currently, the couple run a shop that sells outdoor equipment.
Now living a better life, the locals have come to realize the importance of the forest resources. Through afforestation efforts, the forest stock volume of the forest farm currently stands at 1.67 million cubic meters, compared with 848,900 cubic meters in the early 1960s, statistics have shown.
“In the past, we felt worried when it snowed and were afraid of snow; nowadays, we love it and long for it, and we have turned snow into a cash cow for us,” said Zhang, believing that their lives will surely become better.
