2019 “Hello, Fellow Villagers” Large-Scale Public Welfare Poverty Alleviation Self-Drive Tour Activity Enters Tongliao

“The moon rose high up in the sky / Why are there no clouds beside it? / I’m waiting for my beautiful maiden / Why haven’t you come yet, oh...” When people sing this song, who knows where it comes from? The hometown of “Meeting at the Obo” is the beautiful Horqin, the beautiful Tongliao in Inner Mongolia. This place is home to one-fifth of the world’s Mongolian population. It has deserts, grasslands, forests, lakes, rivers, wetlands, green hills, flowers, history, culture, folk customs, cuisine, and over 500 kilometers of the Horqin Cultural Tourism Scenic Byway.

From June 7 to 11, 2019, the first 2019 edition of the “Hello, Fellow Villagers” Public Welfare Self-Drive Tour Activity, jointly initiated by the Self-Drive Travel and RV Branch of the China Tourism Automobile and Yacht Association, China Poverty Alleviation Development Service Co., Ltd., Beijing Xin Sui Xing Tianxia Tourism Culture Co., Ltd., and Lvmama Travel Network, and supported by the Tongliao Municipal Bureau of Culture, Tourism, Radio, Television and Sports, was successfully concluded in Tongliao. A total of 31 vehicles and nearly 100 participants formed two convoy groups, traveling to Naiman Banner, Kulun Banner, Horqin Left Rear Banner, and Horqin Left Middle Banner in Tongliao for tourism consumption and charitable support activities. Tan Zhijun, Vice Chairman of the Tongliao Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, presented a flag to Li Guanjie, Co-founder and CEO of Beijing Xing Tianxia Auto Club, and a departure ceremony was held.

Xu Haotao, Director of the Tongliao Municipal Bureau of Culture, Tourism, Radio, Television and Sports, mentioned that this “Hello, Fellow Villagers” public welfare self-drive tour activity is dedicated to the sustainable development of tourism poverty alleviation and rural tourism in Tongliao. The activity connected Naiman Banner, Kulun Banner, Horqin Left Rear Banner, and Horqin Left Middle Banner, uncovering new tourism resources, promoting premium self-drive routes, implementing the “Car Trunk Project,” organizing “Buy Instead of Donate” activities, raising awareness and encouraging actual consumption of agricultural products, local specialties, and tourism merchandise, thereby supporting tourism poverty alleviation. It also helped further enhance the regular product development of the 500-kilometer Horqin Cultural Tourism Scenic Byway and establish the image of self-drive tourism.

The event coincided with the 8th National Self-Drive Tourism Development Summit and the 5th China Northern Self-Drive Tourism Development High-Level Forum held in Tongliao. Self-drive tourism associations from various provinces and cities across the country, as well as self-drive tourism organizations from different regions, gathered in Tongliao. At the forum, Li Guanjie, Co-founder and CEO of Beijing Xing Tianxia Auto Club, attended and moderated a salon dialogue session themed on tourism poverty alleviation. Li stated that tourism is the wings of poverty alleviation, and poverty alleviation is the battlefield of tourism. Since Tongliao was officially included in the Beijing-Mongolia paired assistance cooperation scope by Beijing in November 2017, the city has made significant progress in tourism poverty alleviation. Self-drive tourists mainly from the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region are an important consumer group in national self-drive tourism, and Tongliao possesses uniquely rich tourism resources in Inner Mongolia. There is a strong need to guide more Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei tourists to visit Tongliao, attract more tourism enterprises to invest in impoverished areas, deeply develop tourism resources, create tourism route products with Inner Mongolian and Tongliao characteristics, and gradually enhance the packaging and sales of local specialties and various tourism goods from impoverished banners and counties in Tongliao, while steadily realizing both online and offline tourism consumption.