Du'an container homestay drives tourism development

Tourists take a group photo in front of the Longbu Sunrise container homestay. [Photo/Hechi Daily]

At the Longbu Sunrise container homestay in Hechi's Du'an Yao autonomous county, hotel rooms are made of 10-square-meter containers. Each is equipped with air conditioning, a toilet, and tatamis. Above the container is a viewing platform, where tourists can watch the sunrise during the day and gaze at the stars at night.

There are 416 households with 1851 people in Dachong village, Longfu township, Du'an Yao autonomous county, and the amount of arable land per capita is less than 0.5 mu (333.3 sq m). As of the end of 2019, there were still 590 people in 98 households in the village who had not been lifted out of poverty, a poverty incidence rate of 35.2 percent.

In April 2020, Tencent in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, paired up to help Dachong village shed poverty. Chen Yuanyuan, a poverty alleviation representative of Tencent, learned that the most valuable resource in the village is the local natural environment. This led her to think of a bold idea - solving the poverty problem through a cultural tourism project.

In the same year, Tencent donated 2 million yuan ($297,000) and Du'an invested 4 million yuan in the Longbu Sunrise cultural tourism project. They built a 3.3-kilometer hardened road, 158-meter hiking trail, and 14 guest rooms. The project produced benefits when it opened to public and realized a profit of 100,000 yuan.

To date, the scenic spot has received more than 6,260 tourists and produced a tourism income of 2.77 million yuan, while villagers have received 206,500 yuan in dividends.