Prospering with a helping hand from the outside

It sometimes takes a fresh set of eyes to spot the obvious, when those who are overly familiar with a place cannot see the wood for the trees. That is what happened after You Linshan, 32, returned from the United States, after working there for five years, to live in Nyingchi in the Tibet autonomous region two years ago.

You, originally from Xi'an, Shaanxi province, was touring the Nyingchi area and met Tasha, a villager there. Before long they had decided to marry, and You decided to move to Nyingchi.

As they set about planning their future, the couple decided to do a bit of market research on business opportunities in Nyingchi, and they found that there seemed to be great demand for environmentally friendly products from the area. In this respect, Nyingchi's products of the forest, such as matsutake, and many kinds of fruits offer great opportunities, You says.

"More and more people are willing to splash out on healthy, environmentally friendly food as they adopt upmarket spending habits. At the moment, you can't find that many agricultural products from Nyingchi around China, but demand will grow as more tourists come here and discover them."

In October, the couple opened an agricultural processing cooperative factory in their village in Pai town, a part of Nyingchi.

They invested 460,000 yuan ($68,000; 59,000 euros; ￡52,000), and 18 other families from the village chipped in more than 1.2 million yuan.

The factory freeze-dries the local organic products so they can be transported without losing nutritional value and to preserve their flavor, You says.

"I hope that eventually it will not only be Nyingchi's beautiful scenery that leaves a mark on tourists, but its rich diversity of organic foods, too."

The factory now has a staff of five, and the plan is to recruit a dozen more villagers as workers, who will be sent to the cities to be trained for the job. Professional marketing teams have also been brought in to help to promote the products around the country, You says.

Wu Yong, 40, is optimistic about the market in Nyingchi for high-end rural inns and already has solid evidence that this confidence is well founded.

Wu is a native of Yunnan province, where tourism is well developed, and he aims to replicate that success with a rural inn that he and his wife have opened in Nyingchi's Milin county.

Room rates are between 600 and 1,000 yuan a night, which puts the hotel in the top price range, but it is usually booked full during the tourist season, from May to October, Wu says.

Wu says that last year the inn brought in revenue of 600,000 yuan, and he reckons that it put about 370,000 yuan into the pockets of villagers by helping them increase their sales of specialties such as matsutake. It also provided employment for local people as cleaners, drivers and guides, he says.

When the locals became aware of how much he was investing in the inn, they were skeptical about his chances of success, he says.

"They have slowly come around to seeing that people are willing to pay for such accommodation and that the hotel is a profitable proposition."

The demand for such hotels will grow, he says, and, encouraged by the local government, he and local villagers have pooled resources to open another hotel.

The plan is for Wu to run the hotel for several years at the beginning so that the villager investors can learn from his management experience, and they will eventually run it independently.

"It's a good thing for rural inns to form groups," Wu says. "That's what Tibet lacks at the moment. Tourism in the area is as yet undeveloped. There is more space. It's like a big cake, and I can't possibly have it all."

A clean environment with a wonderful landscape and an interesting ethnic mix are Nyingchi's biggest assets, he says. However, an influx of people poses dangers to the environment, and the local government needs to upgrade the tourism industry and the standards that apply to it, he says.

The couple's business activities have played a role in bonding them and the locals, and they often help the villagers do online shopping, Wu says. Parcel deliveries for the villagers often pile up in their home, and they are often invited to join in on local festivities.

"They were friendly enough to accept us as strangers, and we're willing to do what we can to help them, too."

(China Daily Africa Weekly 07/21/2017 page16)