URUMQI -
When Hong Kong action movie director Tsui Hark's
latest martial arts blockbuster Seven
Swords became the curtain-raiser at the 62nd
Venice Film Festival, it at the same time made
free advertising for the unique and charming
landscape of Xinjiang province.
The movie, set in Xinjiang in the early
17th century, tells the story of how seven
sword-wielding Kung Fu masters battled a
bloodthirsty mercenary general and his army to
save an innocent village. It was no surprise that
Tsui, a world famous moviemaker, had selected
Xinjiang as the place to shoot his favorite epic.
Actually, this westernmost autonomous region of
China, which is
also
the largest habitat of the Uighur ethnic group,
has become a popular film production site in
recent years, even contributing to the
Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon.
Meanwhile, the desolate
deserts, snow-covered mountains, prosperous oases
and exotic cultures in the region have made it a
"holy place" for both domestic and foreign
tourists. According to the autonomous regional
tourism department, Xinjiang has received nearly
80 million visitors from all over the world, and
the accumulative turnover from tourism has reached
57 billion yuan (US$7 billion) since China adopted
its "opening-up policy" in 1978.
In the
summer of that year, Patku Abdurahman, who lived
in Kashi, an ancient city in southern Xinjiang,
took off her face veil and had a peep of the first
foreigner she had ever met in her life, who
impressed her much with his "high bridge of nose
and blue eyes". "The foreigner Patku met was one
of the 88 foreign tourists we first received in
1978. This should be remembered as the genesis of
the development of Xinjiang's tourism," said Naimu
Yasa, director of the regional tourism department.
Ever since then, the regional government
of Xinjiang has given priority to developing
tourism as one of the six local "pillar
industries", and has invested huge sums in
improving the transportation and communication
conditions in Xinjiang, which is the country's
largest provincial-level region in terms of land
area.
The efforts have paid off, as the
latest statistics from the regional tourism
department show. In 2004, nearly 320,000 foreign
tourists spent more than US$90 million in
Xinjiang, several thousand times the figure in
1978. In addition, tourism turnover in 2004
exceeded 11.6 billion yuan, accounting for 5.3% of
Xinjiang's gross domestic product, according to
the department. "As a less-developed region in
China, the rapid development of tourism has not
only made known to the outside world the great
changes that have taken place in Xinjiang during
the past two decades, but also brought fortune to
the local people," said Naimu Yasa.
At
Dafusagai Village in Turpan, which is dubbed "the
hometown of grapes", Emilie Grollier, a French
tourist, was eating fresh grapes with her friends
at the courtyard of Uighur farmer Niyaz Rahman.
The French tourist had just visited Jiaohe Ruins,
a 2,300-year-old city on the ancient Silk Road, in
the morning. "It's amazing. In the morning, I was
in the ancient town, feeling the old history of
the Silk Road through the broken walls, but now I
am enjoying the peaceful life of local people,"
said Emilie, who works at a college in central
China's Henan province.
The Rahmans were
also very happy to see the coming of tourists like
Emilie. The Uighur family has received more than
10,000 tourists since last year, when the local
government launched a "home visiting" program to
enable the curious tourists to experience the
daily life of common Uighur families. "In the
past, my whole family lived on planting grapes and
earned about 10,000 yuan a year," said Niyaz
Rahman. "But things have changed now. Last year we
earned more than 30,000 yuan from receiving the
tourists. Now, more and more people come here, and
our life is turning for the better," said the
53-year-old man, adding that he planned to spend
20,000 yuan to redecorate his house with typical
Uighur characteristics to attract more guests.
The regional government of Xinjiang is
also speeding up the tapping of rich local tourism
resources by improving tourism infrastructure
facilities, especially transportation facilities.
Annual government investment in this field has
soared to more than 100 million yuan (US$12.33
million) since 2000, said Chi Chongqing, party
secretary of the regional tourism department.
By 2004, Xinjiang had launched 78 domestic
and international flights, which made travel to
and in Xinjiang more convenient, and built a land
transportation network consisting of more than
3,000 kilometers of railway and 860,000 kilometers
of highway, said Chi. In addition, with a
total investment of 6.2 billion yuan (US$747
million), the Jinghe-Ili-Horgos Railway,
Xinjiang's first electrical railway, started
construction in 2004 and is expected to open to
traffic in 2008. A part of the trans-continental
railway network linking China's coastal regions
with southern European countries, the railway will
run 295.73 kilometers through the Mongolian
Autonomous Prefecture of Bortala and the Kazakh
Autonomous Prefecture of Ili, which are both
situated in the western part of Xinjiang.
The railway will largely ease the
transportation strain between Xinjiang and other
provinces and regions of China, as well as the
central Asian countries, and help bring more
tourists to Xinjiang,said Chi. "We believe the
future will be even better. [Just] as director
Tsui will continue his epic of the Seven
Swords on the movie screen, the epic takeoff
of Xinjiang's tourism will also keep running,"
said Chi.
