Chen Keshi

New Practice of Xizang Cultural Tourism: Baiyu Hepo Activates New Quality Productive Forces Through Intangible Cultural Heritage

2026-07-02

Where the 1,300-year-old national-level Xizang metalworking intangible cultural heritage intersects with modern cultural tourism industries, an industrial transformation of a plateau county is taking root in Hepo, Baiyu County.

The Hepo Ethnic Handicraft Cultural Tourism Integrated Town in Baiyu, planned and designed by Professor Chen Keshi leading the China Urban Planning & Design Institute, has been fully completed and opened to the public. Centered on cultural resources as core production factors and taking all-for-one tourism as the development carrier, the town has pioneered a plateau-specific development path for new quality productive forces featuring "Intangible Cultural Heritage & Sci-Tech Innovation + Cultural Tourism Consumption + Common Prosperity for Local Residents", emerging as a benchmark project for industrial upgrading empowered by cultural tourism along the Great Shangri-La Loop.

## I. Unique Cultural and Ecological Endowments Restrained by Bottlenecks in Development

Known as the "Armory of King Gesar", Hepo of Baiyu boasts national-level Xizang metal forging intangible cultural heritage dating back to the 7th century Tang Dynasty. Metalworking workshops spread across the town produce Xizang knives, Buddhist ritual implements and other wares popular across Xizang-inhabited areas and Southeast Asia, endowing the region with unparalleled cultural resources. Prior to the planning, however, the local industry faced prominent drawbacks:

- Artisans operated scattered home-based workshops with no dedicated spaces for exhibition, sales and experiential activities;

- Cultural tourism was disjointed from handicraft industries, limited to superficial sightseeing with poor capacity to retain tourists;

- Narrow product ranges and low willingness among young people to learn traditional crafts created a crisis of heritage inheritance;

- Comprehensive shortages of supporting facilities for tourism and industrial development.

Valuable cultural resources failed to translate into economic benefits, and the traditional handicraft sector remained inefficient and backward. A cultural tourism integration model was urgently needed to reshape local industries and foster new quality productive forces.

## II. Restructuring the Plateau’s New Quality Productive Force System via Integrated Cultural Tourism

Professor Chen Keshi proposed a planning and design strategy anchored on "culture as the core, tourism as the carrier, industry as the core driver, and innovation as the momentum", establishing a complete closed-loop system of new quality productive forces tailored to Xizang regions.

### Strategy 1: Spatial Restructuring to Build Physical Carriers for Cultural Tourism Industries

A spatial framework of "One Belt, One Axis, Two Cores and Four Zones" was formulated, with full-spectrum cultural tourism infrastructure to address hardware deficiencies restraining industrial growth:

- Construction of a Xizang Cultural Art Museum, an intangible cultural heritage pedestrian street, a central performance square, a comprehensive tourist distribution center and a smart tourism service platform;

- Renovation of traditional folk residences into composite multi-functional spaces featuring "shops at the front, workshops at the back", with residential quarters on the first floor, craft workshops on the second and homestays on the third, integrating production, hands-on experience and accommodation;

- Development of a riverside slow-walking trail and mountain cycling loop along the Ouqu River, with separated pedestrian and vehicle routes to integrate ecological landscapes and tourist itineraries;

- Complete supporting facilities including standardized parking lots, boutique Xizang-style hotels and characteristic food blocks, covering the full tourism chain of "food, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, shopping and entertainment".

### Strategy 2: Industrial Upgrading to Modernize Intangible Cultural Heritage Handicrafts

Breaking the scattered production model of traditional household workshops, the cultural tourism platform enables industrial clustering, specialized division of labor and integrated production and sales, transforming traditional handicrafts into distinctive cultural industries powered by new quality productive forces:

1. Clustered Production: The park accommodates a concentration of core intangible cultural heritage workshops, introducing standardized manual assembly lines with collaborative division of labor to sharply boost output capacity.

2. Immersive Tourism-Oriented Production & Sales: Leveraging tourist foot traffic, an experiential industrial chain of "witness metal forging – hand engraving experience – on-site purchase" is established, forming a closed loop of "production – experience – retail" that converts tourist flows into industrial revenue.

3. Cultural & Creative Product Empowerment: Catering to consumption demands of young tourists, lightweight cultural and creative products such as Xizang paper handicrafts and metal ornaments are developed, aligning traditional culture with modern tourism markets and opening new growth avenues.

4. Digital Cultural Tourism Empowerment: Intangible cultural heritage experience halls and live-streaming sales bases support two-way value generation from offline tourist arrivals and online e-commerce channels.

### Strategy 3: Dual Engines of Culture and Tourism to Foster New All-for-One Tourism Consumption Formats

Moving beyond simple handicraft sightseeing, the planning integrates three major tourism resources—intangible cultural heritage, plateau river valley ecology and Xizang rural folk customs—to create multi-tiered differentiated tourism products, extending tourists’ stay duration, lifting overall consumption and nurturing new forms of tourism-driven new quality productive forces:

- Core Study Tour Sector: An intangible cultural heritage inheritance base offers metal forging experiential courses for parent-child groups and study tour teams, tapping into the segmented cultural study tourism market.

- Plateau Vacation Tourism: A Xizang medicinal wellness resort launches distinctive services including Xizang medicinal baths, plateau health recuperation, river valley camping and mountain cycling to attract long-haul vacation travelers.

- Folk Festival Tourism: Regular Xizang opera and cultural-themed performances are staged at the central square, with exclusive cultural tourism festival IPs developed to sustain steady tourist inflows.

### Strategy 4: Nurturing Talent Ecosystems to Consolidate the Endogenous Foundation of New Quality Productive Forces

An intangible cultural heritage employment training center was built to deliver free metal forging skill courses for local youth, formerly impoverished residents and people with disabilities, resolving the crisis of broken craft inheritance. Meanwhile, the tourism service sector cultivates local professionals specializing in homestay operation, cultural tourism sales and live-stream marketing, forming a dual talent pool of "traditional craft artisans + cultural tourism service practitioners" to sustain long-term industrial development.

## III. On-the-Ground Outcomes: The Town Unleashes New Quality Productive Forces Upon Opening, Driving Dual Prosperity of Tourism and Industries

Since the park opened in August 2025, Baiyu County has witnessed remarkable cultural tourism achievements: the annual number of tourists and total tourism revenue have maintained steady growth, with notable increases in average tourist stay time and secondary consumption. Connected by national highways, the town forms a featured boutique tourist loop and fills the gap of intangible cultural heritage tourism in northern Garzê.

The Hepo Ethnic Handicraft Cultural, Tourism & Sports Integrated Park now hosts 29 clustered intangible cultural heritage workshops. It innovates the "front shop, back workshop" experiential model and a linkage mechanism of "park exhibition + village production", driving over 230 rural workshops across 13 administrative villages. Balanced progress has been realized in ecology, culture, industry and people’s livelihoods, setting a demonstration model for advancing new quality productive forces and rural revitalization in Xizang regions.

## IV. Inspirations for Xizang Rural Revitalization from the Planning Practice

The Hepo Town masterplan designed by Professor Chen Keshi offers a replicable model for Xizang rural revitalization: develop distinctive cultural tourism industries rooted in local intangible cultural heritage, integrate diverse business forms, strictly protect plateau ecology, strike a balance between cultural inheritance and market innovation, and convert the millennia-old King Gesar weapons culture into a competitive characteristic industry—charting a high-quality development path for Xizang regions.