How did one creative idea make a village famous?
This spring, a "love maze" in Ganquan Village, Baitou Town, Chongzhou City, Sichuan Province, stole the spotlight, attracting thousands of young men and women to come and "run the gauntlet." This "love maze" created from a field of rapeseed flowers successfully linked Baitou Town with the romantic love connotation of "growing old together," becoming a wondrous sight in this spring's sea of rapeseed flowers on the Chengdu Plain.
The reporter saw that the maze has two entrances, one for men and one for women, and two exits, one for "success" and one for "failure." Couples who want to test their chemistry and compatibility need only pay a symbolic 5.2 yuan to take a walk through this 20-mu flower field love maze.
Baitou Town sits right next to the Chongzhou Rice Fragrance Tourism Loop, yet it had always remained unknown. How could visitors be drawn here? As the spring rural tourism peak season arrived, an idea popped into the head of Li Mingjian, Party Secretary of Baitou Town -- Baitou, Baitou, taken in the sense of "growing old together," so why not work on the theme of love and turn Baitou Town into a holy land of love amid rapeseed flower fields? No sooner said than done: Baitou Town invited experts from the Guangxi Maze Technology Institute, and soon built a flower sea maze in a 20-mu rapeseed flower field in Ganquan Village.
"The effect was unexpectedly good!" Ye Zhixiang, Party Secretary of Ganquan Village, told the reporter that since opening on March 4, in less than a month, ticket revenue had already reached more than 20,000 yuan. Add to that the spurred sales of agricultural sideline products by nearby farming households and dining spending at farmhouse restaurants, and the benefit was at least several hundred thousand yuan.
More than a month has passed, and the rapeseed flowers have gradually withered, yet Ye Zhixiang still receives group bookings every day. "After this week, we'll have to turn them down." Ye Zhixiang said that next year they could consider planting rapeseed varieties with early and late flowering periods to extend the flowering season as much as possible, and also build toilets, a parking lot, and a rural market for agricultural products.
"To make leisure agriculture and sightseeing agriculture bigger and stronger, the power of creativity must be added," said a relevant official from the Chengdu Municipal Agricultural Commission. Chengdu's leisure agriculture started early and has a good foundation, but it now also faces pressure to transform and upgrade, and creativity is precisely the best driving force.
Our reporter Zhang Yanling