The Conghua district of Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, held its 2021 harvest celebration on Sept 23. The event not only showcased Conghua's agricultural harvest from the past year, but also demonstrated its achievements in rural revitalization after years of efforts. 

New rural living environment

Enormous changes have taken place in Conghua's rural environment since the implementation of its rural revitalization strategy. Clean roads and characteristic guesthouses decorated with scented flowers have made Conghua villages "internet celebrities", attracting tourists thanks to relentless efforts to upgrade its rural environment.

As a major agricultural district in Guangzhou, Conghua has jurisdiction over 221 diverse administrative villages. Conghua has combined rural revitalization work with the construction of characteristic townships to give full play to the role of the townships. 

As of now, all 221 villages have reached the provincial standard for clean and tidy villages. Among them, 191 villages have been built into beautiful and livable villages, and 31 have been built into boutique villages with different characteristics. 

This year, Conghua was enrolled into a list of 17 areas supervised and commended by the State Council for their remarkable results in improving their rural living environment, and it was the only candidate from Guangdong province. 

New agricultural talents

It is not unusual to see young people developing careers in agriculture in Conghua as latest technologies and marketing tools have been widely adopted in the industry.

In recent years, Conghua has established 10 agricultural research institutes in a bid to build a think tank for its all-around rural revitalization. It recruited seven academicians and a talent pool of nearly 160 agricultural experts and professors. 

Institutes for the fragrant rice, lychee and floral industries have all started operation. Its lychee processing technology leads the province with a conversion rate of over 35 percent. High technologies such as AI and 5G are fully promoted in Conghua's agricultural development. 

Moreover, Conghua has established a design research institute to incubate its agricultural brands. The institute has created five signature brands, three of which have become internationally renowned. It has produced over 1,000 packaging designs for agricultural products from 14 villages, which effectively enhanced their market competitiveness. 

New agriculture

Over the years, Conghua has been striving towards the in-depth integration of agriculture and tourism. It has become a hot holiday destination for city dwellers with abundant agritourism resources. As of now, Conghua has built over 40 scenic spots for leisure agriculture and rural tourism. 

During the Labor Day holiday this year, Conghua received 838,500 tourists, a year-on-year increase of 117.4 percent, and an increase of 53.36 percent over the same period in 2019. 

As the hometown of lychees in China, Conghua attaches great importance to developing its lychee industry. The lychee planting area has reached 300,000 mu (20,000 hectares), accounting for over half of the district's total planting area. Focus has been put on breeding premium varieties, sci-tech innovation and extending the lychee industry chain. 

Conghua has built six provincial level modern agricultural industrial parks, topping all the districts in Guangdong. It has a world-class boar gene bank and the largest single-layer chicken industrial park in Asia.

Its annual grain output exceeds 68,500 tons and production and sales of premium quality fruits such as lychees, dragon fruit and grapes are booming. Its output of small potted plants accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the total in the Pearl River Delta region. 

In 2020, Conghua's agricultural parks received 3.9 million tourists, achieving revenues of 312 million yuan ($ 48.33 million), and brought an economic income of over 200 million yuan for related businesses such as farmhouse entertainment, local specialties and guesthouses.