Lvwei Cultural Tourism: Four Thoughts on Rural Tourism Development under the Goal of Cultural Revival

Lvwei Introduction: Along with the advancement of urban-rural integration and the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, the revival of rural culture has become an inevitable requirement and a powerful driving force. Based on an understanding of rural culture's own structure and the requirements of cultural revival, this article reflects on how rural tourism can promote rural cultural revival. Lvwei Cultural Tourism believes that rural cultural revival requires an industrial mindset, not only reflecting farmers' labor and life, rural customs and folkways, and characteristics of agricultural industry, but also forming market-oriented tourism consumer products. It proposes to combine the connotation advantages of rural culture with the market advantages of tourism projects according to integration logic, product system, symbiosis concept, and market activation, to build a 'community' of mutual promotion, value association, and form dependence.

China is founded on agriculture. Rural areas are the birthplace and breeding ground of the Chinese nation, and rural culture should logically be a core component of social culture. With the rapid development of the industrial revolution and urban modernization, not only has the status of agricultural economy as the main battlefield been affected, but the spiritual core of rural areas has also faced unprecedented impact, leading to the inevitable gradual decline of traditional rural culture. With the advancement of urban-rural integration and the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, the revival of rural culture has become an inevitable requirement and a powerful driving force. This year's Central Document No. 1 also mentioned 'launching a cultural industry empowerment rural revitalization plan.' Lvwei Cultural Tourism believes that rural cultural revival should both respect the ontological status of rural culture and consider modern value demands. As an attraction and dissemination carrier of rural culture, rural tourism has become an effective way to inherit, restore, or revitalize rural culture.

Structure and Revival Goals of Rural Culture in China

Rural culture is a 'rooted' culture, formed over hundreds or even thousands of years of rural production and life, carrying a local identity of 'born and raised here, die here.' It embodies local accent, native soil, nostalgia, as well as simple life, enduring values, and traditions, with characteristics of locality and continuity.

From a cultural hierarchy perspective, rural culture can be divided into four types: material culture, institutional culture, behavioral culture, and spiritual culture. It includes both material products, symbolic representations and other material-level creations, as well as value systems, language, behavioral patterns, and other non-material-level creations.

In addition to characteristics such as locality and continuity, rural culture should also have contemporaneity—meaning the spiritual core of rural culture undergoes significant changes over time. Therefore, we believe that the revival of rural culture needs to meet three major requirements: inheritance, innovation, and a sustainable development dynamic mechanism.

Inheritance—reproducing the community structure where gentlemen and farmers share the same origin, and intellectuals and cultivators coexist, creating survival spaces in traditional villages where farming and reading complement each other and rituals reside in the countryside, and reconstructing the ability of rural China to cultivate talent and civilization.

Innovation—integrating modern values that emphasize personal space and build common platforms, resolving the dilemma of integrating into the market economy while maintaining individual quality, and seeking more natural, sustainable, and efficient farming and community norms.

Sustainable Development Dynamic Mechanism—leveraging the creative spirit and cohesive power of culture, repairing the social structure, economic system, and ecological environment of rural areas, forming a sustainable development system that achieves dynamic balance between rural and urban areas and organic support between culture and other development elements.

Symbiotic Relationship between Rural Culture and Tourism Development

With the increasing pressure of urban life, deteriorating urban environment, and gradual return of traditional culture, we have begun to reexamine the value and significance of rural culture. We believe that only by excavating and disseminating excellent rural culture can true inheritance be achieved, and rural tourism is an effective way to activate and recreate rural culture. Especially in the context of cultural and tourism integration, by properly excavating and organizing rural cultural resources, adhering to the revival direction of high quality, refined quality, and mainstream themes, deeply exploring market needs, and orderly promoting the projectization and product transformation of rural cultural resources, we can explore 'activation' paths for rural cultural revival, generating a 'strong get stronger' development effect.

Based on in-depth research and careful analysis of the current state of rural development, Lvwei Cultural Tourism believes that building a symbiotic structure between culture and tourism is one effective means to achieve rural cultural revival. On one hand, the key to the tourism industry is to construct core tourism attractions and achieve market connection through the creation of tourism products and the introduction of external consumption. Rural culture, with its regional uniqueness and scarcity, is precisely the foundation upon which core attraction can be built, so developing tourism has a natural connection with cultural preservation. On the other hand, in the development of the tourism industry, the integration of elements such as creativity, innovation, and technology is indispensable. At the same time, tourists will bring a large number of foreign cultural factors, which, when colliding and merging with traditional rural culture, will help form a new rural cultural system that meets the needs of the times.

Four Thoughts on Cultural Revival Assisting Rural Tourism

Rural cultural revival requires an industrial mindset, not only reflecting farmers' labor and life, rural customs and folkways, and agricultural industry characteristics, but also forming market-oriented tourism consumer products. Lvwei Cultural Tourism believes that, according to integration logic, product system, symbiosis concept, and market activation, the connotation advantages of rural culture should be combined with the market advantages of tourism projects to build a 'community' of mutual promotion, value association, and form dependence.

Reconstructing Rural Culture: Exploring 'Integrated' Artistic Rural Construction

Since the proposal of 'building a new socialist countryside' in 2005, 'artistic rural construction' initiated by artists has already set off a wave, driving large-scale investment to the countryside for construction, resulting in a number of explorations and practices—some successful, some failed, some suspended. After the former Ministry of Agriculture launched the 'Beautiful Countryside' initiative in 2013, 'artistic rural construction' shifted to a situation led by government promotion and active participation of social capital. With the emphasis and promotion of policies such as ecological livability, cultural tourism integration, and intangible cultural heritage protection in recent years, we should also rationally consider the path of 'artistic rural construction' in cultural reconstruction and rural tourism.

From the perspective of endogenous and exogenous variables of rural cultural revival, affected by the common phenomenon of 'hollow villages' and 'left-behind elderly and children,' endogenous variables currently pose relatively large obstacles, so it is still necessary to rely on exogenous variables for facilitation. Through research, we find that current artistic rural construction mainly adopts intervention approaches such as landscape reconstruction, cultural preservation, and subjectivity remodeling. Returning to its purpose, it is mainly to revitalize dilapidated, declining, and backward villages through overall cultural empowerment. Therefore, we believe that the most important word is 'stance'—one must take the stance of the countryside, not the stance of art. It is not about turning rural landscapes and buildings into artworks, but truly reconstructing the culture of the countryside itself. Standing from the perspective of understanding the countryside and its people, delving into the cultural texture of the village and the life and spiritual world of the villagers, based on geography, history, and folklore, then discussing restoration and revival.

Lvwei Cultural Tourism believes that artistic rural construction should shift from 'intervention' to 'integration,' participating in the reconstruction of rural cultural values, integrating into the countryside, creating a 'sense of place,' valuing villagers' experiences and emotional expressions, evoking nostalgic feelings, activating villagers' cultural consciousness and confidence, and forming contemporary interpretations and transformations. This is the most important ideological foundation. Combined with rural tourism, we believe it can be approached from seven aspects: building rural cultural service stations, cultural brand packaging, rural landscape enhancement, rural new media operations, rural tourism route development, rural cultural and creative design, and special festival marketing. Integrating rural culture into multiple dimensions of rural life, production, and ecology, further expressing the new aesthetic of rural life, and achieving sustainable operation and management to promote rural tourism and rural economic development.

Preserving Local Characteristics: Enhancing 'Readable' Product Supply

What makes rural areas rural is the cultural essence of 'local soil.' This is both the origin and core of rural culture and the source of Chinese culture. Local cultures nurtured by agricultural civilization—such as agricultural seasons, ecological ethics, agricultural landscapes, folk arts, ancestral sayings, and rural customs—all manifest the wisdom and spiritual pursuit of the Chinese nation. These are absent in cities. In the context of rural cultural revival, under the 'big framework' of rural environment and agricultural forms, we must fully leverage the sorting and excavation of rural cultural resources, preserve 'local' characteristics, and transform them into observable, playable, and readable cultural and tourism products, exploring 'activation' paths for rural cultural revival.

Lvwei Cultural Tourism believes that, through the integration of rural industries and cultural tourism, we should fully leverage the role of 'tourism+' and 'culture+,' develop multi-functional and multi-type integrated formats, enrich and innovate experiential formats, and adapt to constantly changing cultural experience needs. The focus should be on eight aspects: innovative art agricultural landscapes, specialty handicraft processing experiences, intangible cultural heritage ancient method cultural exploration experiences, local cultural and creative innovation, farming-themed study and research experiences, folk festival activities, pastoral wellness deep experiences, and new agricultural technology experiences.

In addition, the coordination of rural tourism and local cultural elements should be done well. Based on popular products, expand the supply of mid-to-high-end tourism products with rich cultural connotations to achieve efficient integration of tourism project quality, optimal tourist experience, and tourism economic development.

Focusing on Modern Demands: Creating a 'Shared' Lifestyle

China's profound farming culture has formed a distinctive rural lifestyle. With the development of counter-urbanization, the ideal of returning to pastoral life—'Warm distant villages, lingering smoke over huts'—has been reawakened. Many urban residents with leisure time and money seek new rural lifestyles in the countryside. This will also be a major driving force for China's rural revitalization. We believe that for both city visitors and returning villagers, there are nostalgic experiences of homesickness, local sentiment, and rustic charm, as well as sharing demands different from the service relationships of hotels and resorts. At the same time, the revival of rural culture must be based on traditional cultural values, activate the modern value of local civilization, and reconstruct rural lifestyles. From the perspective of rural tourism, we propose a 'three most' life based on the concept of sharing.

'Most Authentic' Local Pastoral Life: Based on the rich content of rural farming culture, folk culture, and historical culture, through the integration and permeation of culture and agricultural landscapes, create attractive and stunning rural earth landscapes. This greatly promotes the improvement of rural appearance and the development of rural tourism. By integrating natural geography, rural topography, local productive landscape crops, and folk utensils, through a 'pan-museum' approach and interactive participation, form new recreational methods and business formats.

'Most Leisurely' Slow Life Experience: The countryside has a good natural environment and ecological farming methods, providing excellent conditions for leisurely and comfortable slow life experiences. Relying on rural resource endowments to develop pastoral wellness and pastoral vacations, through the integration of leisure and entertainment facilities, health and fitness facilities with labor, products, and culture, achieve the goal of returning to nature and cultivating the body and mind, endowing the rural economy with new momentum.

'Most Humane' Rural Social Space: Based on the characteristics of rural culture, plan rural social centers, library public activity spaces, and agricultural gift display spaces in a targeted manner, providing basic communication facilities and venues. Special attention should be paid to humane designs such as children's outdoor education, parent-child leisure spaces, and elderly interest venues, as much as possible reflecting the openness and thoughtfulness of rural or sojourn life.

Multi-Party Participation: Building a Market 'Activation' Platform

In the absence of self-hematopoietic capacity, the continuation and innovation of rural culture and the development of rural tourism require the assistance of new rural development forces and compound talents such as industry going to the countryside, enterprises going to the countryside, and makers going to the countryside. We believe the focus should be on promoting the involvement of returning elites and returning makers, and innovating development alliances or platforms.

Promote the involvement of returning elites and returning makers in cultural revival. We can categorize returning elite involvement into three types: political elite involvement (rural governance), economic elite involvement (rural investment), and educational elite involvement, mainly through ideological and moral cultural construction, institutional cultural construction, behavioral cultural construction (folk customs, traditional skills, etc.), and material culture (rural settlements, ancestral halls, temples, folk crafts, and cultural stations, etc.). Returning makers leverage their familiarity with rural society and cultural environment, as well as available social capital, to invest in rural tourism, specialty agriculture, and other formats. In 2019, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, together with the National Development and Reform Commission, conducted a pilot 'Creative Going to the Countryside' work in key villages, proposing that 'localities should guide and integrate the strengths of design enterprises, higher education institutions, industry associations, new media platforms, and other social forces to deeply explore and refine special rural resources such as handicrafts, residential buildings, and catering. Through training, study and research interactions, and other methods, locally expand a new type of rural talent team that understands tourism and is good at management, thereby promoting the innovative development and specialized management of rural tourism.' The involvement of returning elites and returning makers in rural cultural construction and tourism development requires not only policy support and village organization support but also, most importantly, accurate understanding and cognition of rural society and culture.

Break the boundaries of business entities and innovate development alliances or platforms. Currently, most rural areas lack modern market entities with mature market operation concepts and strong economic strength, which affects the optimal allocation of rural tourism resources. Therefore, it is necessary to follow the concepts of 'adapting to the market' and 'moderate openness,' construct a cultural construction and multi-format rural tourism system with the participation of villagers, enterprises, and the government, build an open, inclusive, and diverse industrial platform, and try different operation models. Actively seek market cooperation partners, promote the clustering of related industrial chains such as cultural and creative industries and cultural performances, form a number of high-quality and unique cultural and tourism projects, enrich the types of rural tourism products, and fully utilize display and promotion opportunities to provide the best display window for rural cultural revival.

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