A stone carving culture-oriented tourism project, invested with a total of RMB 500 million yuan, was commenced officially in Qingtian County recently. The project that has attracted the highest investment from private capital after the initiation of Stone Carving Featured Town platform in Qingtian.

Qingtian Stone Carving Featured Town was included in the construction list of the first batch of featured towns in June 2015 and falls into the category of historical classic. The featured town is constructed in Shankou Town, the birthplace of Qingtian stone carvings and source area of one of the top three soft rocks in China --- Fengmenqing. The overall area planned for the small town is 3.3 km2; in its construction, a series of industrial projects, including culture creativity, regimen, health care, and culture-oriented tourism, are scheduled to be integrated. The primary task for the construction of Stone Carving Featured Town is to activate the investment from both overseas Chinese and native Chinese.

This provincial-level featured town not only brings new opportunity for the rejuvenation of traditional industries, but also provides a big platform to expand effective investment. Shankou is one of the cradles for overseas Chinese of Qingtian County; above 90% households in this town have overseas Chinese as their relatives. Now, the 13,000 overseas Chinese from Shankou are residing in more than 70 countries and regions.

The Orchid Exhibition Hall of Youlin Mountain Villa , the construction just began recently, is another project for the featured town to attract the investment of overseas Chinese.

Jiang Yike, an overseas Chinese in Italy, invests RMB 80 million yuan and plans to construct a leisure and wellness base integrating high-end stone carving exhibition and boutique homestay.

With the returned overseas Chinese as a go-between, He Jinyun, a merchant from Leqing of Wenzhou City, came to the featured town, and invested RMB 50 million yuan for the construction of Huizhenhui Artistic Carving Project, which will focus on the R&D and production of cultural and creative stone carving products. In addition, Datian Village Regimen and Health Care Project with a planned investment of RMB 210 million is also under the stage of investment invitation.

"The total investment of the settled and signed investment projects since the beginning of 2019 has exceeded RMB 600 million yuan; except for an old street reform project that is under government investment, other projects are invested by overseas Chinese and native Chinese," according to the Secretary of the Party Committee of Shankou Town. 

Overseas Chinese and native Chinese with investment enthusiasm greatly motivated the construction of stone carving cultural customs belt, small town core zone of stone carving customs, stone carving creation zone and stone carving cultural leisure zone.

(Executive Editor: Yongliu HE)