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- Brand Officer
- Author|Brand Officer
Introduction: The transformation of ancient towns into "ghost towns" is inseparable from excessive commerce.
If you follow the trend and invest in a project, there will inevitably be problems, and the project will start quickly and close down quickly.
No, there is another project "yellow".
Taohuayuan Ancient Town Becomes an "Empty City"
More than 350 owners lost their money and lost their families
A song by Tao Yuanming about the Peach Blossom Source brought fire to the Peach Blossom Source Scenic Area, but the development of the times has "poured a scoop of cold water" on the Taohuayuan Ancient Town, which covers an area of about 1,600 acres.
Located in the Taohuayuan Scenic Area near the Taohuayuan Scenic Area in Changde City, the Taohuayuan Ancient Town was ambitious at that time, spending 5 billion yuan to build a "set of special catering, five-star hotels, characteristic inns, Ming and Qing commercial streets, Chinese-style courtyards, scenic apartments in one" scenic spot.
It is conceivable that with the Taohuayuan Ancient Town becoming an "empty city", more than 350 owners are really isolated from the world.
Originally, it was planned to be matched with the Taohuayuan Scenic Area, but the national highway was rerouted, and the ancient town was closed, and the "wealth road" leading to the ancient town was also "closed".
Along with the owners of the shops in the ancient town, they were also "blocked".
Overgrown with weeds, idle shops, and worrying prospects are the most intuitive scenes in Huayuan Ancient Town today. The most common thing tourists say is "why is there no one?"
The ancient stone road has a feeling of "ancient people went to the empty building", and the quiet in the ancient town is only the sound of birds chirping and flapping wings.
Even on holidays, there are very few tourists, and the internal management of the ancient town has begun to rot, and no one has dealt with the rust of the stairs like this.
According to a report by China News Weekly, many of them have taken out loans to buy shops, and the more radical ones are even suspected of borrowing from loan sharks.
What's even more pitiful is that some owners not only bought shops in the ancient town, but also bought apartments in the ancient town, spending a total of more than 1.6 million yuan before and after
Source: China News Weekly
There are also owners who spent more than 3 million yuan to buy a shop in the ancient town, thinking that they could repay the loan by rent, but now it is all lost, and the loan of nearly 60,000 yuan per month is no longer affordable, and now the supply has been cut off and begun to resign themselves to fate.
Due to the publicity of the developers at that time, this block will create a bar street, a large supermarket and other supporting scenes to attract tourists, attracting a group of people who come to invest.
As you can imagine, with the abandonment of the ancient town, the passenger flow is almost zero.
The owner who bought it at an average price of 7000+/square meter shared on social media that "birds can't fly in, it's empty, and it's not bad to use it for the elderly."
In the final analysis, in addition to the road being closed, part of the reason is that when the Taohuayuan Scenic Area still had its own "flow", it suddenly "retreated" for three years, resulting in a plummeting passenger flow in the Taohuayuan Scenic Area.
As an ancient town relying on the development of the Taohuayuan Scenic Area, it is naturally in prison, which directly affects the popularity of the ancient town.
In an interview with "China News Weekly", people familiar with the matter revealed that the number of tourists in the Taohuayuan Scenic Area in 2023 will only be three or four hundred thousand.
Just this popular peach blossom eye scenic spot is difficult to protect itself, let alone "feed" the ancient town project.
In addition, the same is criticized for the traffic problem, the whole Taohuayuan Scenic Area is too far, when there are many people, it is not easy to park, even more outrageous is the high charge of the scenic spot.
Even the location of the Taohuayuan Scenic Area is remote, and it is conceivable that the ancient town located in the 15-kilometer suburb of Taoyuan County, not to mention the urban area, is naturally even more uncompetitive.
You can refer to the same in Hunan, which is also built according to the 5A-level scenic spot, and is only criticized by netizens for being inconvenient because it is more than 30 kilometers away from the city.
But fortunately, there are many attractions in the Mu Tongguanyao Ancient Town Scenic Area, such as hitting iron flowers, phoenix chasing the moon, burning blessing lanterns, watching national style performances and other immersive activities, as well as cinemas, museums and other scenic spots. That's what keeps tourists.
In addition to the hard flaws of the geographical location, the most important point of the Peach Blossom Source Scenic Area is the single scenic spot.
Imagine that tourists come from afar, although there are activities and performances in the scenic area, but if there is no linkage scenic spot with a single scenic spot, except for holidays, it probably can't attract too many tourists on weekdays.
Most of the tourists on holidays are "day trips", so this has caused a more embarrassing situation in the ancient town.
On the other hand, the Mercury Tower, which is rebuilt in the form of antique buildings, although there is nothing new in the attractions that have a history of six or seven hundred years, but the prosperity of the night market in the "city that never sleeps" at least increases the playfulness of the scenic spots.
The antique commercial street and the big and small river streets, the night market has been renovated to reproduce the beautiful scenery of the river street wharf by the Yuanjiang River, which not only attracts tourists, but also is the "secret base" of many locals.
And a little farther there is Wuzhen represented by the ancient town of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, although the atmosphere of commercialization is still very strong, and the prices of shops in the scenic area are generally high.
However, with the enrichment of the scene and planning, the tourists of Wuzhen are still the "leading players" of the ancient towns of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
These successful ancient town projects can be said to not only integrate local characteristics, but also rely on the excellent location to create other characteristic neighborhoods, which in turn retain tourists.
But on the other hand, some depressed ancient towns not only look exactly the same, but they don't even want to pretend anymore, and directly put on the coat of the ancient town to become a commercial street, making the ancient town renovation project "one side of a thousand towns".
The picture shows a partial bird's-eye view of Taohuayuan Ancient Town
In fact, the phenomenon of serious homogenization of commercialized ancient cities has begun to appear a wave of "bankrupt ancient towns" in the early years.
A pile of reinforced concrete structures
Transformed into an "ancient town", whose "meat" was cut?
There are some ancient town renovation projects that have been on fire for a period of time before they are "cool", but more often they are cold before they are fire. As soon as it was built, it became unfinished.
According to CCTV, in the "2024 China Ancient Town Tourism Development Report", it is mentioned that ancient town tourism is an important travel choice for tourists in the development stage of mass tourism, and 13 of the 33 5A-level ancient town scenic spots in the country are distributed in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui regions.
It is not difficult to see that the development prospects of the Guzhen project are still very impressive.
According to the statistics of "Jimu News", the number of ancient towns in the country has reached more than 2,800, so under the background of the flowering of ancient towns across the country, there are also many ancient town projects that have been abandoned by tourists because of serious "face collision".
The pavilions and pavilions you see everywhere, Changsha stinky tofu, Xinjiang kebabs, Taiwanese grilled squid, Hong Kong egg waffles......
It's enough to cause visual fatigue. The most outrageous thing is that the ancient town projects are similar, even the cultural projects in the scenic area are "a wind in the underworld", which makes people feel a strong sense of discomfort.
At night, it became like this, although some netizens said that they had moved away now, but the Internet has a memory, and "Shunjing Yu Lock" was completely broken by them.
Therefore, this "tide of bankruptcy" is blowing on the body of Guzhen, and it is normal.
Shaanxi Bailuyuan Folk Culture Village, which was hastily launched after the fire of "White Deer Plain", invested 350 million yuan in less than a year. The Internet celebrity town has become a bunch of "ancient town ruins" that are "tasteless and abandoned".
And this is nothing, standing in front of the "world's first water division building" that will be built with tens of billions of debts, it is a small thing.
The construction of the Shuisi Mansion Hall (also known as the Shuisi Building) began in September 2016, and the total building is a large all-wood frame mortise and tenon structure, revealing a sense of "ancient architecture" that is like a world away.
But in the end, it was rebuilt like this because it was unfinished.
A real Chinese-style ancient town should be able to "look forward to the old people".
If these two cases cannot be regarded as ancient town projects, the ancient town of Weishan Lake, located in Tengzhou City, Shandong Province, which cost nearly 10 billion yuan to build, is a real ancient town project.
Too much emphasis on commercial development has led to the history and culture of the ancient town being covered up by the "replica" style of buildings, and the charm of the ancient town is lacking in the details and atmosphere.
Although a lot of money was invested in renovation and upgrading in the later period, it still failed to win back the hearts of tourists and was on the verge of closure.
There is also Dayong Ancient City, which has invested more than one billion yuan to become the "dragger" of Zhangjiajie Scenic Area's revenue.
According to the report of "New Retail Business", according to the financial report data of Zhangjiajie in 2022, the total operating income of Dayong Ancient City is only 4.1736 million yuan, of which 1.9225 million yuan is the income of parking lot services.
Compared with the operating income of the scenic spot, it seems that the service fee income of the parking lot is "brilliant".
In addition, there is also Heqiao Ancient Town, which has chaotic management and is facing the unfortunate fate of being delisted, because of the excessive commercialization and indiscriminate charging of scenic spots, and finally let itself be removed from the list of 4A-level tourist attractions.
There is also the controversial Tongli Ancient Town, which has been transformed into a modern commercial street lined with shops and tourist facilities under the fanfare.
As a result, the popularity of the ancient town of Tongli has plummeted, and tourists have complained that the ancient town is no longer the place they longed for.
The once picturesque West Street in Yangshuo County has also been transformed into a "night market" filled with various commercial facilities and noise, losing its original natural and cultural charm.
The stories of these ancient towns being abandoned by tourists are just a microcosm of the embarrassing scenes of many traditional Chinese ancient towns or rebuilt ancient towns.
Should the protection of traditional culture and historical heritage and the avoidance of excessive commercialization and entertainment be the "new fashion" that should be pursued more at present?
Write at the end
This situation is not caused by a single reason, but by multiple factors such as the management, service, and culture of the scenic spot.
For the management of scenic spots, it is important to attract more tourists to maintain their original intentions.
What do you think? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to share.
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