Interview of Mayor Zhao Xiaoming

Zhangjiajie City, as the host of the 1st International Culture-Tourism Festival, has attracted attentions of numbers of media. Zhao Xiaoming, vice secretary of the CPC Zhangjiajie Municipal Committee and mayor of Zhangjiajie City was interviewed by several media as Xinhua News Agency, China News Service, Hong Kong Wenhui Po, Hunan Daily, Hunan Satellite TV, etc. on Oct. 24. Xiao Lingzhi, member of the standing committee and director of the Department of Publicity of the CPC Zhangjiajie Municipal Committee, presided over the interview and gave a brief introduction to the festival.

Zhao stated that Zhangjiajie City was originally established based on tourism and has been transformed from a tourist resource power into a tourism industry power during the past 22 years, and further endeavored to ascend into a power in terms of tourism economy nowadays. For the sake of quality upgrade in Zhangjiajie s tourism industry, efforts have been made on the probe and reform of tourism in extensive and connotative content so as to expand the sightseeing-oriented tourism to a comprehensive tourism industry integrating recreation, leisure vacation, commerce and exhibition as well as rehabilitation into a whole.

In recent years, Zhangjiajie has played an active role in leading Xiangxi (West Hunan) Culture and further the Huxiang Culture, thoroughly boosting the integration of tourism and culture, accelerating exchanges between the local culture and international fashion, and thereby cultivated a series of high-end culture-tourism highlights, fostered numbers of leading personnel in cultural industry, created culture-tourism brands, and promoted competitiveness in cultural industry.

The Zhangjiajie International Country Music Week held last year caused a sensation both at home and abroad, which was a successful practice of the integration of culture and tourism.

As Zhao pointed out, Zhangjiajie possesses irreproducible natural scenery as well as unique culture. Endeavors should be made to accelerate the exchange, integration and engagement between Zhangjiajie featured culture and global culture, so as to promote Chinese culture, Huxiang culture as well as Zhangjiajie City to the world via the platform of tourism.