Red tourism sees boom 红色旅游正“青春”

江海连

Recognized as one of the most important revolutionary bases in China， Yan’an， in Shaanxi Province， has been one of the beneficiaries （受益者） of an emerging Red tourism trend. The city’s Red tourism market boomed during the five-day May Day holiday this year， when it received 1.6 million visitors and recorded nearly 1.5 billion yuan in revenue.

Yan’an is home to 445 memorial sites， accounting for 72 percent of Shaanxi’s Red tourism resources.

Zhao Yanping， a 67-year-old from Lishui， Zhejiang Province， said he had been inspired by a visit to the Zaoyuan Revolutionary Site in Yan’an with his wife in early May. “I’m quite lucky that I was born after the founding of the People’s Republic of China， but I never forget what my father told me about their hard life in the war，” he said. “He always told me to be grateful to the Communist Party of China （CPC）， without whom we could not live such a good life nowadays.”

“I told my wife many times that we had to visit Jiaxing Nanhu Lake in Zhejiang and Yan’an after we retired. We visited Nanhu last month and now we are in Yan’an. We’ve learned more about history and our respect for these revolu-tionaries has increased.”

Yang Guangyuan， director of Yan’an’s pub-licity department， said its biggest attraction is the spirit that has been passed down by gene-rations of the CPC members and is now being carried by young people. “The Communist Party of China has grown from weak to strong， leading China’s revolution to get out of its plight，” he said. “The city now has its traditions well pro-tected while looking forward to a vigorous （充滿活力的） future. We are making efforts to reshape these memorial sites into popular attractions to let visitors have new experiences.”

Visits to Red tourism attractions are expe-cted to rise this year as the CPC celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding. Their increa-sing popularity will not only enhance people’s knowledge of the CPC history， but also bring significant economic benefits.

Young people are showing increasing inter-est in visiting revolutionary sites. Trip.com Group， another online travel agency， said reser-vations for such attractions in the first half of this year by people born after 2000 were up 2.5 times compared with the same period in 2019.

As patriotic education becomes more popu-lar， tour packages related to Red tourism will become best-sellers， with young people the main customers.