Karst landscape creates sustainable opportunities

Editor's note: As protection of the planet's flora, fauna and resources becomes increasingly important, China Daily is publishing a series of stories to illustrate the country's commitment to safeguarding the natural world.

When Ran Yijie packed up his marketing degree and left his city job in 2021 to return to the rugged mountains of Chongqing, his neighbors thought he had lost his mind. He had successfully escaped the isolation of Jingzhu, a village once defined by severe rocky desertification, crushing poverty, and a mass exodus of its youth.

Today, nobody is questioning his sanity. Ran's family home is now a thriving local restaurant generating over 100,000 yuan ($14,000) annually, anchoring a massive reverse brain drain that is reshaping the economic landscape of Southwest China.

Driven by the strategic development of the nearby UNESCO Wulong Karst World Natural Heritage Site and the booming Fairy Mountain National Tourist Resort, Jingzhu has transformed from a dying hinterland into a magnet for young entrepreneurs and outside investors. In a crowning achievement, the United Nations World Tourism Organization has recognized it as one of the world's "Best Tourism Villages".

Wulong Karst, including the Three Natural Bridges, Furong Cave and the Houping Giant Doline, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007 as part of the South China Karst.

Karst landscapes are formed by limestone that has been eroded by dissolution, producing ridges, towers, fissures and sinkholes.

The economic numbers coming out of the region underscore a lucrative market centered around the rocks. In 2025, Wulong's scenic areas pulled in 52.1 million tourist visits, including nearly 800,000 international travelers, generating 25.1 billion yuan in total tourism revenue.

Jingzhu, with a population of 2,000 and located just six kilometers from the Fairy Mountain resort, has capitalized heavily on this influx.

Gao Yan, Party secretary of Jingzhu, said after Wulong's successful world heritage inscription and the opening of the Baotou-Maoming Expressway, villagers began developing high-altitude fruit picking and rural restaurants for tourists. After Fairy Mountain was upgraded into a national-level tourist resort in 2015, the village started to cultivate integrated enterprises covering leisure vacations, study tours, commerce and agriculture.

The timing, Gao said, allowed Jingzhu to leverage its proximity to the heritage site to expand its development.

In 2025, the village recorded over 1.5 million tourist visits, and tourism revenue of over 100 million yuan. Per capita disposable income among villagers has surpassed 27,000 yuan, a figure significantly higher than similar rural villages in Chongqing municipality.

"Local people have benefited from the heritage site," said Chen Zhang, head of the village's agriculture, culture and tourism development company. He said villagers' incomes have increased by more than 10 percent annually on average since the World Heritage Site was named.

Chen said fruit farmers no longer worry about sales. A grape grower once told him that revenue from the crop could reach about 600,000 yuan per hectare. At peak times, he said, as many as 350,000 long-stay visitors live in the nearby resort area for months, and many drive directly to the village to pick fruit.

"We do not really have to go out and sell," Chen said. "They come to us."

Thriving enterprises

Restaurateur Ran is among a number of young villagers who have found a way to share in that growth. With support from local authorities, he turned his family's idle house into a restaurant serving local cuisine. He said the local government covered the renovation costs as part of a homestay alliance policy, under which idle village houses are upgraded for business use and later returned to villagers, with the improvements left in place.

His mother, who began as a kitchen helper, prepares a local specialty soup, and his father has opened a small store beside the restaurant.

In recent years, nearly 200 people have either returned from outside or come to Jingzhu to develop new enterprises. They run homestays, grow fruit and operate restaurants, turning once-empty courtyards into bustling tourist hubs.

The village has 46 homestays and rural inns. Blueberries grown in the village can sell for 120 yuan per kilogram, while grapes and other high-altitude specialty fruits generate more than 150,000 yuan per hectare on average, according to village authorities.

The development has not come at the cost of abandoning ecological protection, with local officials saying Jingzhu maintains a forest coverage rate of about 75 percent, and a negative oxygen ion concentration of around 35,000 per cubic centimeter.

The village's approach, they said, is to keep the core heritage area under strict protection, allow appropriate use in buffer and surrounding areas, and help residents increase income through catering, homestays, fruit farming and other peripheral industries.

That approach reflects a broader model explored in Chongqing's Wulong district.

Liu Baodang, deputy secretary-general of the World Heritage Expert Committee of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, said Wulong has put in place a three-layer protection and development system.

The core layer is strictly protected, the surrounding layer is developed through community participation, and the outer layer supports nature education, tourism, sports and cultural activities. "Protection and development no longer work against each other," Liu said.

In the core area, protection is enforced through legal and administrative mechanisms. Wulong established a world natural heritage prosecutors' office in 2024, integrating criminal, civil, administrative and public interest litigation functions related to environmental and resource protection.

Over the past three years, local authorities have handled more than 80 criminal cases related to environmental resources and more than 110 public interest litigation cases. More than 27 million yuan has been invested in heritage protection over the last five years. Construction projects are required to undergo planning and site checks before development.

Outdoor sporting competitions and activities have become another route for sustainable use. Fairy Mountain's scenic road is a core section of the China International Mountain Outdoor Sports Open, which has been running for more than two decades and has attracted competitors from over 70 countries, said Huang Wei, deputy head of Wulong's culture and tourism commission.

Wulong has 24 hiking routes spanning 774.64 km, he said. In 2024, its outdoor sports industry generated more than 1 billion yuan in revenue and received more than 10 million sports tourism visits, creating stable employment for more than 3,000 residents.

Chen Weihai, a researcher at the Institute of Karst Geology of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, said Wulong Karst is of world-class quality. The three natural bridges within 1.5 km of the Three Natural Bridges form one of the world's largest beaded natural bridge groups, while the Houping Giant Doline cluster provides important evidence for studying karst development and regional geological change.

For Jingzhu village, however, the significance of the World Heritage Site is also visible in more ordinary scenes: A young man returning home to cook local dishes, families turning idle houses into businesses, fruit growers selling directly to visitors and old courtyards filling with people again.

The karst landscape neighboring Jingzhu brought tourists. Tourists brought business. Business helped bring young locals back.

"Without the World Natural Heritage Site, Jingzhu would not be what it is today," said Xie Yong, an official with the Fairy Mountain subdistrict government.

He said the village's "ecology plus culture and tourism" approach has become more than a development model. It is a path to rural vitalization built on the protection and sustainable use of natural heritage.

houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn