CHANGCHUN, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- On the eve of the Spring Festival, Zhang Zhaosheng, 57, hurried to hang Spring Festival couplets before sitting down to make dumplings with some of the tourists visiting his B&B in northeast China's Jilin Province.
"This year, nearly 200 people celebrated the Spring Festival with us," said Zhang, a resident of Nangou Village in Jilin's Yongji County.
Together, Zhang and his guests chatted and laughed cheerfully, sharing the Spring Festival customs of their homes and feasting on local delicacies such as iron pot stew and braised goose with pickled cabbage.
"They've got to try our signature dishes to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year," Zhang said.
A tourist surnamed Zhu traveled over 3,000 kilometers from south China's Guangdong Province to spend his Spring Festival at the famous Beidahu Ski Resort, which is located just 5 kilometers from Nangou Village.
"It's now very trendy to come to the northeast to celebrate the Lunar New Year, and snow and ice tourism is particularly popular this year. I just wanted to spend more holiday time immersing myself in the fun of skiing, and I also wanted to get a genuine taste of the local way of celebrating the Spring Festival," Zhu said.
In Nangou, Zhang has both witnessed and benefited from the booming snow and ice tourism industry. He was once a farmer, and the long winters used to leave him without much to do but idle the time away.
With snow and ice sports and tourism continuously heating up, Jilin Province's highly suitable environment has made it a popular tourist destination. And Nangou and other villages close to the Beidahu Ski Resort have been among the first in the province to reap the benefits of their strategic location.
Zhang began operating a B&B in 2013. "The initial intention was to serve a few tourists. I did not expect the demand to grow so fast," he said.
He expanded his B&B in 2016, offering 16 rooms, and the business offers 60 rooms today. He noted that his family's annual income has increased from less than 20,000 yuan (about 2,815 U.S. dollars) to nearly 300,000 yuan.
"My two sons and daughter all have come back to help," Zhang said. "This year, we saw many familiar faces."
After finishing their festive dinner this year, Zhang's guests decided that they would go skiing the next day, and Zhang said that he would provide them a free shuttle service.
This winter, the Beidahu Ski Resort increased its number of pistes from 27 to 64, and its skiing area has almost doubled to 239 hectares.
Yin Yixuan, a public relations officer at the Beidahu Ski Resort, said that the resort welcomed a total of 514,800 tourists from Nov. 18 to Feb. 4, an increase of 41 percent year on year, and its revenue increased more than 40 percent to over 269 million yuan. The resort's average hotel occupancy was 85 percent during the period.
"During the Spring Festival, our daily average guest reception number exceeded 10,000, and we prepared many festival activities for tourists, such as dragon dances, fireworks shows and an exhibition of intangible heritage," Yin said.
Spring Festival travel bookings in Jilin saw a whopping 560 percent year-on-year increase this year, according to a market forecast report on Spring Festival snow and ice tourism released by major Chinese online travel agency Trip.com in mid-January.
And the rising popularity of winter tourism is increasing the confidence of business owners in the province. Betting on the increasing market potential, Zhang is considering expanding his B&B business yet again.
"Nangou can now be referred to as a 'snow and ice village,' and I'm sure the snow and ice economy will get hotter and hotter," said He Jianming, a village official. ■
