From honeymoons to high-end tourism
Under a crystal blue sky, beams of sunlight play on the water of the lake. Hundreds of meters away, egrets fly past the reed marshes that surround the water. Five wooden fishing boats are sailing on the lake, with their sails hoisted under the sky.
It’s hard to believe that this picturesque scene didn’t exist 12 years ago, when the area was just a barren strip of grassland and foul, uninhabited ponds.
“Back then, papermaking plants and cement works just discharged their industrial wastewater directly to the lake. Added to that, with 24 lakeside restaurants and hundreds of local fishermen dumping their kitchen and living waste in it, the water stank,” said Ge Wei, director of the Huzhou Taihu Tourist Vacation Zone, recalling what he saw when he arrived in 2006.
Covering 55.3 square kilometers, the zone is one of the most popular attractions around the lake, and is dubbed “the lungs of Lake Taihu”.
“Of all the cities around the lake, Huzhou is the only one that is named after the lake (in Chinese, hu means “lake”). But back then, the environment here was one of the worst,” he said.
In the summer of 2007, large quantities of foul-smelling bluegreen algae contaminated a section of the lake in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, affecting the water supply of more than 1.5 million residents.
Drawing lessons from the incident, after 2007 the Huzhou government launched a long campaign to improve the lakeside environment.
In addition to moving fishermen from their boats and housing them on land, the government invested more than 2 billion yuan ($317 million) to move all the polluting factories away from the lakeside and spent 300 million yuan to team up with environmental professionals in Shanghai to restore the ecosystem.
The efforts have paid off. Last year, the zone received 7.4 million tourists, generating tourism revenue of 5.05 billion yuan, a year-onyear rise of 20 percent.
Take Moon Bay, for example, located on the south bank of the lake. It has become a must-see attraction for newlyweds to have wedding photos taken and for their honeymoons. The landmark Huzhou Sheraton Hotel stands in the middle of the bay, representing a supersized moon rising from the water.
The zone is working on building China’s first honeymoon town, themed with weddings, honeymoons, culture and entertainment.
Now, the lake is one of the major tourist attractions for people in East China and beyond, according to Ge, who said the green policy will be maintained to make the zone a highend tourist destination.
“We hope to make the zone a ‘Central Park’ for people in the Yangtze River Delta area,” he said.