Tasting authentic local cuisine, experiencing the folk customs of Yaozhai, and feeling the coolness of drifting on the Xijiang River... In Changning City, Hengyang, Hunan Province, which has just concluded the 2024 Hunan Province (Summer) Rural Cultural Tourism Festival, there is a continuous stream of tourists visiting major tourist attractions, and rural tourism is booming. Drifting on the Xijiang River in Tashan, Changning. As the venue for this rural cultural tourism festival, Changning's scenery is like poetry, with a rich history and a long cultural charm, exploring a new path of rural revitalization through the harmonious development of culture and tourism. Following the development concept of "seeing mountains, seeing water, remembering nostalgia, and preserving cultural context", Changning has created tourism business cards such as China's Yinshan, Tashan Yao Township, Red Shuikoushan, and Changning Printmaking, and a number of new rural tourism products, new formats, and new entities are flourishing. The scorching summer is the peak season for tourism in Tashan Yao Township. At the foot of Tiantang Mountain, on the banks of Xijiang River, the famous "Jiang Family" of Zhoujia Group in Xijiang Village welcomed guests from all over the country to cool off. Homestay owner Jiang Lijun is considering how to perfectly combine authentic cuisine, unique folk customs, cultural and entertainment activities, and recreational activities to provide tourists with a more comfortable and enriching leisure experience, catching the cool summer economy. As the saying goes, 'rely on mountains to eat, rely on water to drink.' Developing rural tourism requires grasping resource advantages and adapting to local conditions to 'play with' characteristics Jiang Lijun introduced that relying on the natural scenery and tea culture of Tashan, she integrates characteristic themed homestays with tea culture exhibitions, tea and agricultural specialty sales, and tea picking experiences. She uses the local tea tourism economy and Xijiang's "cool economy" to attract guests to the homestay. During holidays, our guest rooms are always fully booked. Since its opening one year ago, it has driven the sales of local Yaoxiang agricultural products such as tea, cured meat, and rice cakes, and increased tourism value by about 10 million yuan. The Propaganda Department of Changning Municipal Party Committee provides pictures of many villages and towns in Hengyang, which is rich in tourism resources, that have developed characteristic tourism projects by exploring regional resources according to local conditions. In recent years, Hengyang City has introduced policies to support rural tourism, giving priority to the development of rural tourism around cities and scenic spots. More than 200 scenic spots and rural tourism service areas with local scenery, customs, and traditions have sprung up in the fertile countryside of Hengyang. To stimulate the driving force and vitality of rural development, Meihua Village in Xidu Town, Hengyang County, located in the suburbs of Hengyang City, leverages its geographical advantages and relies on mountains, waters, and rural areas to develop agricultural tourism integration industry projects, innovatively creating a leisure tourism backyard. Inside the Plum Blossom Park, there are complete tourist facilities such as the Little Waist Observation Tower, 9D Cinema, Ice and Snow Kingdom, Karting, Rainbow Slide, etc; In the agricultural product exhibition hall, local brands such as "Meihua Village," "Meihua Yuan," and "Meihua Qiao" sell hot fragrant rice, flat rice cakes, and rice cakes. Liu Zhun, Secretary of the Party Branch of Meihua Village, introduced that the village has developed leisure vacation entities and cultivated village level public brands of agricultural products through the participation of all villagers, creating the "Meihua" brand and turning rural areas into scenic spots and agricultural products into tourism commodities. In 2023, the collective economic income of the village reached 3.23 million yuan, and the per capita annual income of the villagers reached 32000 yuan. Cultural tourism is an important engine driving rural empowerment, as well as an important source of stimulating rural vitality and infinite energy Xie Hong, Deputy Mayor of Hengyang Municipal People's Government, said that rural tourism connects the poetry and distant places of urban and rural life, and is also related to the beautiful life of the general public. Nowadays, rural tourism and leisure agriculture, which mainly focus on "traveling in the countryside, eating in rural areas, and playing in the fields", are becoming a new engine for the development of rural economy in Hengyang and a new channel for farmers to increase their income. Plum Blossom Paradise (Information Image). According to the data provided by the interviewees, as of 2023, Hengyang City has created 3 national key villages and 1 key town for rural tourism; 17 provincial-level key tourism villages and 3 key towns; There are 109 provincial-level star rated rural tourism service areas (points). There is still room for development in the future. As the core area of 800 miles of Hengshan and 800 miles of Xiangjiang, Hengyang City has a unique ecological environment, rich cultural heritage, and abundant rural tourism resources. Wu Jianbo, Deputy Secretary of the Party Group and Deputy Director of the Culture, Tourism, Radio, Television and Sports Bureau of Hengyang City, said that currently, Hengyang's rural tourism has achieved some phased results, and there is still great development space in the future. In the next stage, we will continue to make efforts to enhance product features, extend the industrial chain, and improve service quality, and develop different types of rural tourism products such as agricultural and forestry ecological sightseeing experience tours, leisure vacation tours around cities, and high-altitude summer health tourism. We will promote the construction of intelligent and information-based rural tourism, provide more convenient and efficient tourism services for tourists, and enhance the competitiveness and attractiveness of Hengyang's rural tourism products. The Rural Culture and Tourism Festival aims to create themed brand events, promote high-quality development of rural tourism, and assist in rural economic development and rural revitalization. The event held in Hengyang is not only a witness to the achievements of rural cultural and tourism development in Hengyang, but also a beautiful prospect for future rural development. Xie Hong stated that Hengyang will seize the opportunity of the tourism festival, promote the deep integration of rural tourism and rural revitalization strategy with more open and practical measures, create more characteristic rural tourism boutique routes and products, make the charm, scenery, and atmosphere of the countryside a growth point for benefiting and enriching the people, and make cultural heritage and red genes a solid foundation for rural economic revitalization. (New Society)