Bright, colorful paintings hanging on the walls of the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong might look similar to other modern artwork. But closer examination reveals their distinctiveness - all depict a land and people before outside the common knowledge of an average Hong Kong resident. The land is Heilongjiang, the northernmost Chinese province, known for its deep snow and dense forests.

Hong Kong and Heilongjiang couldn't be much further from each other on the map of China. But any distance melted away as a delegation from the province, headed by the director of its culture and communication department Yi Junqing, presented the cream of indigenous culture to the international metropolis.

The mini-exhibition, inaugurated on Tuesday afternoon, offers a taste of a land that is, to use the words of the director, "beautiful, rich and mystical". But culture is playing second fiddle to commerce. Behind the attractive showcase is a single-minded effort to lure investment and broaden the scope of economic cooperation in art and culture to create something more prosaic - revenue and jobs.

"There have been cultural exchanges and businesses between Hong Kong and many parts of the mainland over the past decade. But they had been pretty much on parallel lines," said Yi. "This is the first time any province has tried to attract investment by solely playing the culture card."

For anyone with the slightest idea of the province's history in the past five decades, the strategy is bound to raise some eyebrows. With heavy industry that was first built in the 1950s and '60s - and partly laid to waste since the country began its historic transformation from a planned to a market economy - Heilongjiang has until now been known for anything but its rich cultural heritage.

Long legacy

Yet according to the director, an incredible cultural legacy exists, ready to be tapped. "In history, the area known today as Heilongjiang is the birthplace to many ethnic peoples who later went on to become the conquerors of a large part of China," he said.

These include the Nuzhen people, founders of both the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) - the last feudal dynasty to rule China.

According to Yi, all that history could be tapped for making period dramas and stage productions.

Then there's the province's vivid and more recent history. In fact, the land, at one time inhospitable due to its forbidding winters and large tracts of wetlands, is no stranger to the stories of people in their heroic efforts to build a home.

In the late 1950s and '60s, tens of thousands of demobilized soldiers and young students were sent to Heilongjiang in what was to become one of the country's largest land-reclamation effort. Many of them stayed.

All this could become the source for movie and television productions as people over the past decade have developed a collective nostalgia for a gone-by era.

Yi readily points out that Heilongjiang distinguishes itself from neighboring Jilin and Liaoning provinces - known collectively as the Three Northeastern Provinces - as home to a unique immigrant culture.

"The fact that Heilongjiang shares a border with Russia is crucial in the formation of a distinctive immigrant culture with a foreign vibe," Yi said.

A plan to construct a movie and television base that could also serve as a tourist destination has been proposed. According to Yi, it will also feature Russian-style architecture that at one time dotted the cities and now can rarely be seen.

The project, once launched, will cost an estimated 2 billion yuan.

Modern cultural industries

However, instead of plunging headlong into history, the provincial government of Heilongjiang has also been keeping a close eye on the development of modern cultural industries such as publishing and animation.

After a series of restructuring moves, the province's publishing sector is now ready for a major financial injection to give it the final push it needs to embrace the market.

Since first put to use in 2006, an animation production center in Pingfang is currently in full swing. Outsourcing work comes mainly from South Korea and Japan. "We have a certain edge in the field of animation, keeping in mind the large number of universities that we have," Yi said.

And the labor force is cheap, which, according to Yi, will become the biggest draw for potential investors and outsourcers. "Hiring an animation technician in Heilongjiang costs at most 60 percent of what it would have cost in, say, Zhejiang or Jiangsu," he said.

The signals have been sent and Hong Kong investors are taking notice. Contracts amounting to 2 billion yuan were signed on the same afternoon the exhibition opened.

"I must admit that Heilongjiang has been for a long time lagging behind in developing a competitive cultural industry," the director said. "But that drawback could be our biggest advantage."

"While other markets for investors have become saturated, Heilongjiang offers the biggest opportunity for those who have the vision to combine culture with commerce," he said.

(China Daily 05/15/2008 page13)