Peony Blossoms Boost Rural Tourism in Linfeng Town During May Day Holiday
Linfeng Town, Weixin County, Zhaotong City in Yunnan Province, has gained widespread popularity during the May Day holiday, thanks to its 1,100-mu peony flower sea. With soaring online traffic and a surge of offline visitors, the town has activated the potential of rural cultural tourism through peonies, successfully creating a top rural tourism highlight during the holiday. This has brought the beautiful village hidden in the mountains into public view, depicting a new picture of rural revitalization where "traffic turns into staying power and beautiful scenery into economy".
In late spring and early summer, the 1,100-mu peonies in Linfeng Town have entered their full bloom period. Sixty-eight high-quality varieties, with layers of pink, white, red and yellow flowers and faint fragrance, have become a natural "traffic password". Starting from an initial 4-mu experimental field, the flower sea has expanded to a core planting area of 760 mu, driving surrounding villages to engage in planting and forming a magnificent scene of continuous blooming, which provides core attraction for the town’s cultural tourism to gain popularity, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Taking advantage of its unique flower sea resources, Linfeng Town accurately seized the May Day tourism consumption boom and officially launched the Peony Flower Appreciation Season on May 1. The event connects multiple formats including ecological sightseeing, fresh cut flower production and sales, and rural cultural tourism, building a core scene for traffic conversion. Ancient style check-in routes, Hanfu rental experience, flower sea photography, on-site calligraphy and painting, and interesting puzzles were held in turn, accompanied by special experiences such as peony banquets and local agricultural product exhibitions. These activities have endowed the flower sea with both "beauty" and "fun", providing abundant materials for online communication and driving the continuous rise of topic popularity.
During the May Day holiday, topics related to "Linfeng Peonies" spread widely on major social platforms, forming a communication matrix of "short video promotion + picture-text check-in + influencer promotion", with explosive growth in online traffic, making it one of the popular cultural tourism topics during the holiday. People’s Network reported that short video platforms witnessed a surge in popularity, with the playback volume of topics such as #LinfengPeonyFlowerSea and #MayDayCheckInLinfeng exceeding one million times on Douyin, Kuaishou, WeChat Channels and Xiaohongshu.
Before the event, 21 media influencers formed a "million traffic team" to visit and take photos in the Linfeng peony flower sea. Through their lenses, these influencers comprehensively showed the beautiful scenery of the flower sea and rural characteristic experiences, covering more than one million fans, achieving precise promotion and quickly enhancing the national popularity of Linfeng peonies. Mainstream media including Xinhua News Agency, People’s Network, Yunnan TV Station and Yunnan Daily also focused on the cultural tourism grand occasion of Linfeng peonies, with the highest view count of a single article exceeding 1.4 million, which enhanced the credibility of the topic and expanded the communication scope.
The high online popularity has been accurately converted into offline passenger flow. During the May Day holiday, the peony base in Linfeng Town received a continuous stream of visitors, including self-driving tourists, parent-child tourists and ancient style check-in tourists, marking a "good start" for rural tourism. Around the flower sea, snack stalls thrived, and special foods such as peony-themed nine-course meals were favored by tourists. Local agricultural products such as square bamboo, kiwifruit and wild fungi saw a sharp increase in sales, allowing tourists to enjoy a one-stop experience of "appreciating flowers, tasting food and purchasing specialties".
Relying on the peony industry, Linfeng Town has formed an income increase model of "land rent + wage income + share dividend", driving more than 180 households to obtain flexible employment with an average annual income increase of about 15,000 yuan, truly realizing "one flower prospers, hundreds of industries thrive". This year, Linfeng peonies have not only become a landmark business card for rural tourism, but also accelerated the formation of an integrated agriculture-tourism pattern of "flower appreciation in spring and medicinal herb collection in summer".
Looking ahead, Linfeng Town will continue to focus on the peony industry, expand planting scale, optimize varieties, and increase the added value of products such as fresh cut flowers and Chinese medicinal materials. It is expected to harvest more than 1.6 million fresh cut flowers this year with a total output value exceeding 5 million yuan. At the same time, it will improve cultural tourism supporting facilities, enrich formats such as flower appreciation, accommodation and experience, and continuously amplify the traffic effect, making "beautiful economy" a lasting driving force for rural revitalization.
