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Ceremonious Opening of the 1st Yam Culture Festival 2019 at the Daxiong Mountain, Xuzhuang Town, Dengfeng City

Dengfeng City held its first yam culture festival at the Daxiong Mountain, Xuzhuang Town. Sponsored by the Culture and Tourism Bureau of Dengfeng City and the People’s Government of Xuzhuang Town, the opening ceremony of the two-day festival was launched on the morning of November 2 with the theme of “Appreciating King Yam, Digging Yam, Tasting Local Food, Enjoying Autumn View and Seeking the Path of Local Revitalization”.

At the opening ceremony, Zhu Jianping, the prime secretary of Hejiamen Village stationed by the Culture and Tourism Bureau of Dengfeng City, introduced the situation of assistance in the poverty alleviation program by developing cultural tourism in recent years, during which he also promoted yam produced in Daxiong Mountain on the spot. Chen Shengqiang, mayor and vice party secretary of Xuzhuang Town pointed out that the yam culture festival was held to comprehensively display the characteristic agricultural products such as yam in Xuzhuang Town, to cultivate a new brand of Dengfeng specialty products, to promote rural tourism in the whole town and to promote the all-rounded revitalization with its rural beauty. As the highlight of the Daxiong Mountain Yam Culture Festival, the activity of selecting “King Yam” was the most eye-catching. After comparison and evaluation of over 40 applicant samples by seven professional judges from three aspects of weight, shape and cultural meaning, the yam themed “Hand” produced by He Zhanxin, a villager of Hejiamen, got the highest score, and his yam “Golden Silk Ingot” won the title of “King Yam” on the first event.

The festival was supported strongly by all walks of life. Enterprises involved in cultural tourism in Dengfeng organized their staff to take part in the festival activities and reached tentative agreements of purchase on the spot. Guangda Travel Agency of Dengfeng provided voluntary services during the festival: sending 10 shuttle buses every day to carry citizens between the festival site and the downtown. It is reported that online sales volume of yam reached over 1,000 kilograms only on the first day of the festival and that off-line sales volume broke 5,000 kilograms.

Hejiamen used to be a low-income village under the jurisdiction of Zhengzhou. It is also a pilot for the “Beautiful Village” construction project in Zhengzhou. Since the entering of the working team from the Culture and Tourism Bureau of Dengfeng City for poverty alleviation in 2016, Hejiamen has been guided to vigorously develop characteristic farm produce production like yam considering the local advantage and has achieved phase result thanks to the great support of the party committee and the government of Xuzhuang Town and the positive cooperation of the village committee. So far, 377 villages from 109 poor household have got rid of poverty, and 81 households have an average annual income of RMB 11,000.

Copyright by Zhengzhou Municipal Tourism Administration