A tourist resort in Daxingzhen village, Qidong, Nantong. [Photo/ntfabu.com]

Daxingzhen village in Qidong, Nantong has been included in the list of key rural tourism villages in Jiangsu province which was recently released by the provincial department of culture and tourism.

Before the new wave of COVID-19 cases in the country, the resort in Daxingzhen was so popular on the weekend that it was near impossible to get a room without first making a booking, said Chen Hongxian, Party secretary of the village.

Daxingzhen was once an unknown agricultural village on the northern bank of the Yangtze River. Villagers did not see the potential for development until the opening of the Chongming-Qidong Bridge, which links the village with Chongming district in Shanghai.

One of the first steps the village took to develop itself was spending more than 80 million yuan ($12.37 million) to transform a 9-hectare pool and a 20-hectare lowland into two tourist resorts. The village then unified scattered orchards that were running by over 200 households to build an ecological orchard area for sightseeing, recreation and fruit picking.

The village also renovated the former residence of Shen Yigong, a former army director during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and the former principal of Qidong Middle School, as well as a century-old local street.

Tourists from Shanghai soon flocked the village during the holidays to participate in activities such as admiring flower blossoms in spring, picking peaches in summer, tasting pears in autumn and enjoying the sunshine in winter.

Over the past five years, the village has received more than 100,000 tourist visits. The lives of residents have also improved dramatically.