Editor's note: The Sichuan-Tibet Plateau, a beautiful region that reaches toward the heavens, is a place showered with blue skies, covered in white clouds, and dotted with snow-covered mountains, but recently, something truly remarkable has been materializing among the households that call this place home. A groundbreaking historic change has been reshaping the land and its people. From today on, we will publish a series of stories to tell you those changes. 

According to statistics, when the thoroughfare opened to the public, the number of tourists increased from 2,000 in 2001 to more than 800,000 in 2016, and revenue from ticket sales increased from tens of thousands to millions of yuan.

Over 100 households now admit tourists, and 23 of these are listed as qualified hotels.

There are three three-star hotels, and the entire number of beds offered to visitors has reached a mind-blowing 1,500.

No wonder Jiaju was listed in 2016 as one of the top scenic destinations in the country!

To make sure that things continue going strong for the villagers, Chenghua has organized advanced training sessions for locals of Danba County to improve their abilities to cater to incoming tourists, and 265 villagers have already signed on for the program.

The Chenghua Tourism Circuit and Jiaju-Chenghua Tourism Thoroughfare is a beautiful example of how such support networks between districts and villages can really be advantageous in bringing locals out of poverty and effectively using aid through proper management and planning.

From 2012 to 2016, Chenghua has taken on the responsibility of being a primary component of Chengdu’s city center.

In that light, it invested 105.28 million yuan (15.90 million US dollars) in aid to fund 25 projects in Danba County to help develop its infrastructure and industry, improve the livelihoods of locals, build new residential quarters, protect the environment, and make room for enhanced capacity and safety measures.

In 2016, 1,179 people from 301 households in 22 impoverished villages were finally brought out of poverty, and in 2017, measures to spread this concept throughout the rest of Danba County were in operation, with various subdistricts, departments, and enterprises partnering with other areas in need.

Such efforts will most certainly result in a bolstered industry, better quality of life, and improved community management that can and will be sustained far into the future.
 

The Chinese version of this story is written by Yi Xianhong & Wang Xi and translated into English by Huang Wenjuan. And the story is sourced from the United Front Work Deparment of the Communist Party of China (CPC)Sichuan Provincial Committee.

Editor:Tommy Tan.