As a spring breeze sweeps across the southern foothills of the Lyuliang Mountains in Xixian county, Shanxi province, tourists wander through a spectacular "snowy sea" of blooming pear and apple blossoms, immersing themselves in the unique poetic charm and development vitality of the Loess Plateau.

Xixian boasts a millennium-long history of winemaking and pear cultivation, and is home to the famed Buddhist temple, Xiaoxitian. Hailed as China's "Pear Capital", it is a major production area for Yulu fragrant pears, highly favored domestically and internationally for their large size, thin skin, and sweet, crispy taste.

The county's total pear planting area covers 25,333 hectares, including 15,333 hectares of Yulu pears. In 2025, total pear output exceeded 125 million kilograms, generating 660 million yuan ($96.6 million). Yulu pears alone contributed 37.5 million kg and 225 million yuan.

Xixian has built up a fruit-forest economy, with pears accounting for 80 percent of its arable land, farmer employment and agricultural income.

To meet cross-regional and off-season sales demand, Xixian has built 175 constant-temperature fruit warehouses with a capacity of 160,000 metric tons, achieving precise production-market integration.

At Yellia, a local company involved in pear businesses, nearly 100 workers race to fulfill orders on sorting, packaging, and dispatching lines. The company's multi-thousand-ton constant-temperature (-1 C) warehouse features intelligent temperature control, while automated lines achieve precise grading through 3D imaging and nondestructive sugar testing.

"Through constant-temperature storage, we have completely solved the pear preservation problem," said Zhang Lizhou, general manager of the company. "We achieved stable off-season supply and increased the brand's market premium to boost farmers' incomes, truly opening a smooth channel 'from field to market' for high-quality Yulu pears."

Web traffic empowers cultural tourism, and agritourism integration boosts incomes. Large-scale planting has made blooming pear blossoms a key tourism resource. Furthermore, the August 2024 global launch of the video game Black Myth: Wukong made its filming location, Xiaoxitian Temple, go viral. Built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), this millennium-old temple is famous for preserving 1,978 painted sculptures, attracting numerous tourists.

In 2025, Xiaoxitian generated 25.69 million yuan in ticket revenue from over 1.5 million visits. This tourism boom also drove pear sales, with over 2.25 million kg of Yulu pears sold through cultural tourism channels, generating approximately 23 million yuan. Currently, Xixian's "offline counters + online platforms" network, featuring 133 e-commerce enterprises and 1,140 sales teams, drives over 20,000 people to engage in pear sales, achieving about 48 million yuan in annual online sales.

Xixian is also home to the millennium-old Wucheng baijiu brewing tradition. Its well-preserved Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) wine cellaring vats bear witness to Xixian's winemaking heritage, with the ancient brewery housing them now a popular tourist draw. Winemaking in Wucheng town spans 1,100 years, and was one of Shanxi's top five brewing regions. The industry flourished in the Qing Dynasty. Since then, generations of brewers have innovated techniques, and in 2009, the Wucheng ancient brewing technique became a provincial intangible cultural heritage.

From a single pear to an industrial cluster, and from agriculture driving tourism to tourism promoting agriculture, this land, embraced by the Lyuliang Mountains, is using "small specialty products" as a fulcrum to leverage the "grand revitalization" of the beautiful countryside, achieving a two-way empowerment of industry and tourism.

renqi@chinadaily.com.cn