Yichang city received 2.168 million tourists during the 3-day-long Dragon Boat Festival, up to 14.76% from a year earlier, due to a variety of characteristic tourism including folklore tourism, family trips and leisure tours. Eight scenic spots under key monitoring received 273,000 tourists in total, increased by 26.92%. Attracted by beautiful landscapes and mild weather, citizens and tourists were willing to spend ￥1.082 billion yuan on Yichang tourism.

　　Yichang, as the hometown of Qu Yuan (Qu Yuan was a Chinese scholar and minister to the King from the southern Chu during the Warring States Period. His works are mostly found in an anthology of poetry known as Chu Ci. His death is traditionally commemorated on the occasion of the Dragon Boat Festival) and birthplace of Dragon Boat Festival, again added new flavors to the “feast” of featured folk custom. For example, during the 2017 Zigui Qu Yuan Hometown Dragon Boat Cultural Festival held in May 30th, many kinds of theme activities like sacrifice rites, dragon-boat race, fireworks show with laser water curtain and poetry banquet created a strong festive atmosphere, attracting a lot of tourists to participate. What’s more, Qu Yuan’s hometown also creatively organized the Dragon Boat Festival Comic Carnival, joining the animation elements into the traditional culture. A series of majestic or cute Qu’s images were drawn on the paper, pulling people closer to history. At the same time, many catering enterprises in Zigui launched special Qu Yuan family feast with the Xiajiang food culture. There were 44,400 tourists in just one place, Qu’s hometown during the holiday season.

　　As Children’s Day is coming, family trips and water-cooling are becoming the popular ways to outdoor activities on these hotter and hotter summer days. For example, the scenic spots of Chaotianhou Rafting and Qinglong Canyon Rafting both received more than ten thousands of people, which saw a sharp rise during the holiday. And over 20 thousands of people came to the Three Gorges Great Waterfalls to enjoy the cool and wash lungs. The West River (Xihe) Great Aanyon in Yuan’an is the first choice for suburban trips not only for the lush trees and water but for its temperature 22 ℃. As the hot place for family trips, Zhanghe Reservoir where travelers can both play with water on beach and do barbecue outdoors received more than 30 thousands of tourists during this vacation. Liziping Village and Chaibuxi Village in Wufeng attracted many visitors by hosting family trips.

　　Tourists enjoying experience of slow entertainment have a new where to go----the Three Gorges International RV campsite, which attracted lots of tourists traveling by car from Enshi, Jingzhou, jingmen and Wuhan and other places for the first time and were fully booked before the holiday when it was going to soft operation during the Dragon Boat Festival. In addition, the Peach Festival in Zhangjiawan Village, Xiannv County, Zhijiang Town and Blueberry Picking Activities in Linqiao Blueberry Park, Dangyang Town also won popularity and wealth.(Journalist: Wangying; Correspondent: Shi Yan’nan)