Icing on the cake
Chocolate is among magic ingredients boosting local tourism’s appeal
Like many cities, counties and towns in China, Jiashan, in Zhejiang province, has an unofficial motto that vaunts what are regarded as some of its main attributes, “Jiashan: Land of fish and rice.”
As a tourism marketing slogan that certainly leaves something to be desired, but Mo Xuefeng is busy burnishing a new set of credentials for the county, one that has a little more appeal and a lot more bite: “Jiashan: Land of chocolate”.
In setting up a chocolate manufacturing plant in the county, Mo is doing what many other localities in China are doing: trying to turn existing assets — whether they be salt, steel or something else, or creating new ones — and turning them into attractions that tourists can simply not resist.
The localities forging such ideas have the backing of an action plan the National Tourism Administration issued in November that envisages 100 industry demonstration sites being developed throughout the country over the next three years, with the aim of increasing the number of tourist visits by 100 million to 240 million by 2020, producing an income of 30 billion yuan ($4.76 billion).
Those targets seem entirely plausible when you consider that the administration says the country’s industry tourism has grown an average of 31 percent a year over the past three years. A total of 1,157 industry tourism destinations received 140 million visits by the end of 2016, raking in 21.3 billion yuan ($3.4 billion), it says.
Industry tourism has made inroads in more than 100 fields, ranging from food processing and artifacts making to aerospace manufacturing and intellectual equipment manufacturing.
Although the country’s industry tourism is still in its infancy, it has formed intact industrial systems featuring 262 resource-based cities, 145 national high-tech development zones and 219 national economic and technological zones, offering tremendous possibilities for tourism.
Industrial visits have evolved from simple visits to plants to shopping, learning industry knowledge and culture. More than twenty facilities have been named national industry tourism demonstration facilities, covering cosmetics, dairy products, drugs, silk, spice and wine. Then, of course, there is that chocolate mini-city that Mo has set up in Jiashan.
At first glance he may seem like an unlikely man for such an enterprise. After all, his father created a very successful packaging company, and earlier on it seemed that the son’s future lay in cardboard.
Instead, after studying at Boston University for four years and obtaining a degree in finance, Mo returned to China and decided that it was in chocolate — something he had had a passion for since he was young – that his future lay.
Jiashan is well placed geographically to ride on the coat tails of other tourism centers, being about 80 kilometers from Shanghai and 100 kilometers from Hangzhou and Suzhou. Mo’s ambitious plans for setting up a business in this field called not only for a factory, but also a cluster of related businesses and other activities aimed at drawing tourists.
Seven years later, this has come to fruition in a 28.6-hectare complex of red-brick buildings set in a fairytalelike garden featuring a colorful windmill, a sea of blossoms and big stone pillars, which sits under a blue sky with billowing white clouds.
The aroma of nuts, mint, milk powder and cocoa permeates a 150meter-long gallery, where visitors can not only see the entire chocolate production line operating a floor below through transparent glass but can also taste chocolates, such as the white and dark varieties that ooze out of fountains.
The site has become hugely popular, drawing in nearly 900,000 travelers last year, Mo says, and after opening to the public in 2014, it was named a national four-star scenic spot.
“The idea is to let customers enjoy chocolates and see how cocoa beans have been turned into wrapped confectionery, learn the culture and have fun.”
Visitors can gain an insight into the journey coffee beans have made from Africa to the factory, and they can pick ingredients for their favorite chocolates at a customer bar.
In another area visitors can get hands-on experience in making their own custom-made chocolates.
The venue has even become a backdrop of choice for wedding photos.
Mo says his success has been built on the knowledge and expertise he has accrued after visiting chocolate plants overseas. A better understanding of how chocolate is made and the allied traditions will give a fillip to the sales of premium chocolates among increasingly shrewd Chinese customers, he says.
“Few knew that chocolate was originally a drink, and some of my friends could not even tell the difference between cocoa and coffee beans.”
In other areas of the country, too, industrial tourism is making its mark.
In Qinghai province, Northwest China, over the past three years Chaka
The idea is to let customers enjoy chocolates and see how cocoa beans have been turned into wrapped confectionery, learn the culture and have fun.”
Mo Xuefeng
founder of Jiashan chocolate town
Salt Lake has been transformed from a highly prized industrial asset into a tourism draw.
Here millions of tons of salt are produced every year, a huge money spinner for the local economy, but not content to rest on its laurels, in 2015, a total of 325 million yuan was invested into making the most of the spectacular natural scenery the brine lake presents, laying on tours to show visitors how salt is made, and drawing on local ethnic elements.
The waters of the lake are generally so still that they produce an almost perfect mirror image of the sky, a godsend for tourists armed with cameras, and a train carries visitors from the banks of the lake to its center, where they can see salt collecting vessels in action.
Art performances and salt sculptures and health products are also available. The lake had more than 2.44 million traveler visits in 2016, bringing in more than 220 million yuan in tourism income.
Even greater plans for the tourist attraction are afoot, including a tour that would take in the entire salt production line, a salt museum and a big salt sculpture park in which visitors could fashion sculptures out of salt, says Ren Zihua, a tourism official at the lake.
Last year Keketuohai in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region developed what is said to be China’s first rare metals mine sightseeing route, which includes a treasure hunt and a program that aims to popularize geology. It received more than 120,000 visits last year.
In Huangshi, Hubei province, a town with a history that goes back 3,000 years, ancient copper, iron and coal mines, as well as a more recent cement plant, are now open to visitors.
In the Huangshi national mine park, a pit that runs to a depth of 444 meters has become a top tourist attraction. About 200,000 visitors go there each year. In addition, more than 1.2 million acacia trees have been planted on the park’s hardrock mine to create a vast blossom scene in spring.
In Tangshan, Hebei province, seven national industry tourism demonstration sites have been developed that draw on the area’s industrial heritage, which includes China’s first mechanized coal mine, steam locomotive and factories that make bathroom and toilet fittings. All this helped Tangshan pull in 1.3 million industrial tourists in 2016.
The rapid growth of industry tourism is a result of both traditional businesses leaving something behind after modernization and some companies wanting to increase brand awareness and increase sales through tourism, says Zhang Hui, director of the tourism school of Beijing Jiaotong University.
Integrating the growth of industry and tourism benefits both, says Zhou Lingqiang of the tourism and hotel management department of Zhejiang University.
Industry enables visitors to gain a new experience and pick up knowledge, while tourism helps industry increase its market presence, Zhou says.