Or travel together, or join a team, as a tourist in your own city, and discover the novelty of traveling abroad
City walks, travel on your doorstep
Our reporter An Yanjing
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City walks are quietly developing in many cities in our country.
Either walking together or joining a team, people walk on the route with historical and cultural characteristics in the city, observe and understand the history, geography, architecture and cultural landscape of the city, and refuse to check in fancy attractions.
"From one to ten, walk the 'slowest' alley" "When you come to Beihai Park, you don't have to swing your oars"... As a travel blogger, in Fu Ruoyan's social platform notes in the last month, City The word Walk appears frequently.
"I used to run to other cities when I had free time, ignoring the beauty around me." Fu Ruoyan was born and raised in Beijing. She was always busy with work in the past. She rarely stopped to appreciate the "old Beijing" around her. The pace of life has slowed down, and during this time she fell in love with strolling the streets of Beijing.
City walks, first popular in London, England, led by a leader familiar with local history and culture, led a small team of about 10 people to walk in the city's historical and cultural lines to observe and understand the city's history, geography, architecture and cultural landscape. Refuse to check in at fancy attractions.
Nowadays, city walking is also quietly developing in many cities in our country.
Rediscover the city and share the good local life
Han Xiaodong met with friends at the exit of Fuchengmen subway station, and planned to start a city walk in Beijing's hutongs.
They started from Ertiao Hutong at the gate of the palace, and proceeded from west to east, walking slowly through the alley.
Enter the Lu Xun Museum and smell the fragrance of flowers under the lilac tree planted by Mr. Lu Xun.
When you are tired of shopping, you can find a cafe with a second-floor terrace to view the White Pagoda of Miaoying Temple, which has a history of more than 750 years, from an excellent angle.
After a short rest, they continued all the way to the east, and along the way, they checked in Beijing's characteristic cultural landmarks such as the Temple of the Emperors of the past dynasties and the Xishiku Church.
"In just a few hours, there were constant surprises, and it also gave me a deeper understanding of where I live." Han Xiaodong told reporters.
At the beginning of this year, she came into contact with the travel method of city walking, so she did some online strategies and found a few interesting routes to meet with friends for a stroll.
"My usual travels only focus on the sights, and I don't notice these places." For Han Xiaodong, city walks are an important way for her to re-understand and explore the city.
Being a tourist in her own city brings her no less freshness than traveling abroad.
Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, said that after more than 40 years of development, my country's tourism industry has entered a new stage of comprehensive development of mass tourism based on national consumption.
There are two prominent features in this new stage. One is that tourism has become a daily life option for urban and rural residents; the other is that tourists are no longer limited to activities in scenic spots, shopping malls and other places, and they will extensively intervene in the living space of urban and rural residents. , to participate in the sharing of local good life.
Find new ways to travel today
One day in June, Lei Yuanwei wanted to lead the 8 people who signed up for a walk through Kuanzhai Alley, a relatively large-scale Qing Dynasty ancient street left in Chengdu.
At 9 am, Lei Yuanwei came to the gate of Jinhe Hotel.
This was chosen as the meeting point, not only because of its proximity to the subway station, but also as part of the day's city walk.
The hotel itself was built on the former site of the Chengdu General's Mansion in the Qing Dynasty, and across the street is the Chengdu People's Park, which was built in 1911.
At the beginning of the trip, Lei Yuanwei told various historical stories.
This morning, they walked through the cultural wall made of old bricks with different historical sections, listened to Lei Yuanwei's narration of the life in old Chengdu in the past, immersed in tea culture under the leadership of the locals, and got to know Sichuan dozens of times. Growing spices, experiencing intangible cultural heritage and picking ears...
In the 15 years after graduating from university, Lei Yuanwei has been a European tour guide. Affected by the epidemic, the demand for overseas travel has been greatly reduced. Combining his own characteristics and the current new way of travel, he started the team leader of Chengdu City Walk.
Lei Yuanwei used his professional advantages to design different routes suitable for urban walking in Chengdu, and used the platform of travel agencies to attract users, and got good feedback.
Now he mainly promotes his city walking route through WeChat public account, video account, Xiaohongshu and other self-media platforms.
At the end of last year, Lei Yuanwei participated in the pilot project of urban and rural community governance led by the Sichuan Civil Affairs Bureau - Shaocheng Well Life and Culture Scene Creation, and cooperated with the local government to provide community residents with cultural tourism products and services.
In the future, he would like to make more attempts in the combination of urban walking and public welfare.
The reporter noticed that under the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, many local government departments have dug deep into urban resources and launched a city walk plan.
For example, from 2020 to the present, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism has successively launched 4 special routes for the Chinese New Year, "Welcoming Spring, Bite Spring, Reading Spring, and Exploring Spring", the theme tour of "Walking Beijing-Qingming Shanghe Walking Tour", "10 A boutique walking route in Beijing will take you to correctly open the "May 1st Holiday" and many other Beijing city walking routes.
Can industrialization be promoted?
Due to the epidemic, Han Xiaodong has not successfully signed up for the group tour of City Walk.
"I think it's worth participating. I look forward to the team leader with rich knowledge to bring more detailed explanations and help me open more doors to new worlds," she said.
As a professional team leader of City Walk, Lei Yuanwei is currently not getting the salary he expects.
Affected by the epidemic, his income is not stable.
"The overall profit is relatively low. If the price is set too high, no one will sign up. At present, most of the young people sign up." He said.
At present, in Shanghai, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Nanjing and other cities, urban walking has developed rapidly and has become a travel method for many young people, mostly through walking, cycling, theme photography and other forms.
The City Walk team can generally provide travel services independently. They personally explore the route and design routes, and promote products through their own websites, official accounts, Weibo, interest groups and other platforms. They do not rely on traditional stores and online travel agency platforms, and directly connect with merchants and locals. Residents, to achieve team travel.
Dai Bin introduced that the current city walk is mainly for the individual market, and they mainly obtain travel information through the Internet platform.
In the future, industrialization may be advanced in two directions. One is that traditional travel agencies and online travel service providers will develop tourist routes and products related to city walks to form new market segments; Internet operators such as Red Book and Douyin that serve local residents enter and provide tourists with information on city walks.
He said that more and more tourists will be widely involved in the life of the destination, "from the theater to the vegetable market", and rediscover the beauty of travel.
Capital, technology, cultural creativity and traditional tourism enterprises should form a joint force for development. Government regulatory authorities also need to promote institutional innovation with a more open attitude, and better promote the combination of supply and demand in the construction of the platform, allowing more market players Step in to better serve city walkers.