Spring Festival Tourism Booms with Rich Cultural Flavors

The nine-day "super long Spring Festival holiday" has come to an end, with tourism emerging as a highlight of the festive season. During the Spring Festival, people not only enjoyed precious family reunions but also witnessed a booming cultural and tourism market, with domestic trips reaching 596 million person-times and total domestic tourism spending hitting 803.483 billion yuan, both setting historical records.

Cultural experiences have become the most attractive part of travel during the holiday, as more and more people choose to travel to distant places to experience diverse Spring Festival cultures and seek a unique festive experience. Visiting cultural and museum venues, viewing lantern shows and experiencing intangible cultural heritage (ICH) have become popular ways to celebrate the New Year.

Traditional folk customs remained the most popular choice in the tourism market. During the holiday, tourist arrivals surged in both historical ancient cities such as Luoyang, Xi'an and Nanjing, and small and medium-sized destinations with unique folk traditions. Folk activities like Shehuo parades, lion dances, stilt walking and yangko performances were held in many places, creating a lively festive atmosphere. Traditional temple fairs were also a hit, featuring folk art performances, handicraft displays and local delicacies, attracting numerous visitors.

Celebrating the Spring Festival in cultural and museum venues has also become a new trend. Cultural and museum institutions in various regions launched hundreds of themed exhibitions and experience activities, with the Year of the Horse zodiac culture as a major highlight. Special exhibitions and creative cultural products related to cultural relics gained great popularity, allowing the public to experience traditional culture in an interesting and vivid way.

Lantern shows added more charm to the festival, with colorful and creative lanterns lighting up the night sky across the country. From Zigong's grand lantern festival with magnificent lantern groups to Zhouzhuang's water town lanterns and Huizhou's ancient village fish lanterns, traditional lantern-viewing customs were integrated with local cultures to create rich cultural tourism scenes. Advanced technologies such as AI interaction, 4K projection and drone light shows were also incorporated into lantern shows, bringing new fun and vitality.

As the second "ICH version of the Chinese New Year" since the Spring Festival was inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, ICH tourism became another bright spot. Immersive ICH experiences replaced simple check-ins, with activities such as Yingge dance performances, traditional New Year painting making and iron flower shows attracting a large number of visitors. These experiences allowed people to feel the charm of traditional culture and understand its context.

Inbound tourism also picked up during the Spring Festival, with air ticket orders for inbound trips increasing nearly tenfold year-on-year. Foreign tourists are no longer limited to major gateway cities and have begun to visit counties and villages to experience Chinese life and traditional culture in depth. A variety of ICH experiences have won wide praise from foreign visitors, making the Spring Festival an international cultural event that conveys joy and warmth, and serves as a vivid window for the world to understand China.