Qufu forum sheds light on development of cultural tourism cities

On June 26, Nishan Sacred Land, a cultural experience center for Confucian culture in Qufu, Jining, East China's Shandong province, hosted the 2022 Jining (Qufu) Forum on World Famous Cultural Tourism Cities.

As an important part of the 2022 Shandong Tourism Development Conference, the forum ran under the theme of "Promoting Communication and Mutual Leaning among Civilization, Building Famous Cultural Tourism Cities". Industry leaders attending the forum shared their views on how to develop new tourism products, and how to foster new forms of tourism to promote the high-quality development of World Famous Cultural Tourism Cities.

Shandong has rich culture and tourism resources, and in recent years, the provincial government has attached great importance to promoting the transformation and upgrading of its culture and tourism sector by introducing a slew of development plans in hopes of building Shandong into an international culture and tourism destination.

A number of new culture and tourism projects have been established in the province along with many other high-quality projects. Currently, the province is home to 45 tourist resorts at or above provincial level, including four national ones, ranking Shandong third in the country.

Shandong now has 10 national historical and cultural cities, and it is making great progress in developing cities including Qingdao, Jinan, Tai'an, Qufu and Penglai into world famous cultural tourism cities.

Jining, the venue of the forum, is seen as the cradle of Chinese civilization for being the birthplace of Confucius and Mencius - well-known ancient Chinese philosophers - and other ancient sages. The city has a variety of unique cultural relic sites, with three of which under State-level protection: the Confucius Family Mansion, and the Temple and Cemetery of Confucius. These relics attract thousands of worshippers and tourists from home and abroad every year.