Discussion keeps the world turning.
Older cities are facing some new questions, because preserving buildings and streets is no longer enough.
Across China.
Historic neighborhoods are turning into living spaces where people do not just observe the past, but experience it.
The real challenge though is not keeping old walls standing, it's keeping those places relevant.
So, when ancient streets meet a new generation of people, what is it that makes those young people want to stay?
Coming to you live from our studios in Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thank you kindly for joining us for our show today.
And for it, I'm with Yusheng and Xinyu.
First up.
For a long time, historic districts were designed to preserve the past, protect old buildings, restore old streets and tell old stories.
But today, preservation alone, it's not enough.
Across China, historic neighborhoods are experimenting with something new.
Immersive performances, hands-on heritage experiences, creative small businesses and spaces where people don't just visit history, they kind of live inside it.
The challenge isn't simply how to keep an old city upright, but how to keep it alive.
So, when you take those thousand-year-old streets and introduce them to Gen Z, what is it that makes those young people want to stay, or even come back or just hang out there or perhaps, in the best case scenario, build a future there?
Yuxin and Xinyu, good afternoon to you both.
Yeah, there are a lot of examples we could talk about today for old historic neighborhoods districts, streets.
And the fight to stay relevant and cool and fun.
But let's start with how China defines a historic or a cultural city.
Because to me, from an expat's eyes, that's kind of the whole country in a way.
Because China has such a long history.
But how does China define it?
Totally understandable.
The first impression that you were introducing this topic is that how would an expat think of these ancient cities or culture here in China?
I would say probably they would treat them as they all look the same, but actually it is so diverse.
And back in February 1982, China has already officially introduced the concept of a historic and cultural city to protect important cities and their heritage sites.
And in November 2021, China's Ministry of Housing and Urban, Rural Development and National Cultural Heritage Administration issued a notice requiring more systematic evaluations of how these cities are being preserved.
And these cities themselves, Jingyu.
These are places that have been shaped by thousands of years of history and remembered for their cultural significance.
Yeah, maybe not all of them are thousands of years old.
But I mean in Chinese it's called the historical and cultural city, but actually they're not entirely cities.
Some districts or counties.
They are rich in historical sites or they have significant cultural or revolutionary value.
They're also been designated.
Like Yushun mentioned in 1982, There are 24 cities have been designated, including cities like we are very familiar with Beijing Xi'an Luoyang, Chengdu.
They have been like the capital city in the past dynasties before.
And also, there are different types of such cities.
Like I said, some were once the capitals of dynasties like Xi'an, Beijing and others served as political or economic centers of their time.
For instance Suzhou Yangzhou Guangzhou, and some became historically important because of landmark events like Yan'an Nanjing Shenyang, and while others are known for preserving valuable cultural relics such as Pingyao or Dunhuang.
These places over the years, over the decades, have become really, really popular tourist attractions, not only with international visitors, but also with domestic travelers as well.
Just how popular are they nowadays?
Exactly.
It is becoming a more popular destination that people may try to find and go to.
And nowadays, ancient towns and historic cities have become one of the most popular choices in China's tourism market, because One short video platform or their live service data is showing that, during the 2025 National Day holiday, group buying orders for these ancient towns and historic cities destinations surged almost 300 month on month.
In one month.
Yes, exactly.
And basically, when people are having a long holiday, probably the first choice that they are trying to search or they're finding to go is these kind of ancient towns, tourist attractions.
That 300 increase month on month.
If you compare that to other tourist attractions, your typical ones, like a water park or a zoo or a museum, these historical cities, these types of destinations fall far outperform those ones that I just mentioned.
So that's proof that these historical spots are real hot places for tourists to travel for their breaks.
And one of them is not that far away from your hometown, as a matter of fact.
Exactly.
It's called Shaoxing in Zhejiang province in eastern China.
And it is one of China's first also, we mentioned it the first batch of National Historic and Cultural Cities.
And it has a history of more than 2500 years.
And actually that is one of the points that it is so unique and also popular, because it reserved that kind of ancient, 2500 years of layout of the city.
Yeah.
And this city in particular, Shaoxing, was recognized in 1982 as a National Historic City.
So that's proof that, yeah, here we are in 2026.
Even back in 1982, it was recognized as one of the most important historic cities in the country.
Yeah, that's the first batch.
And, as I mentioned before, it remained on the same site for more than 2500 years without relocating.
And that's very few phenomenon that happened in China right now.
What does it look like?
What's the layout of Shaoxing?
It is a very quintessential city of these canals, rivers and bridges in the Jiangnan region of southern China.
Water towns.
Yes, water towns.
It's a very classic one.
And when you visit it You can totally feel that kind of you know gentle vibe, because you can see the canals and rivers going through the whole city.
And that is one of the, I think, most classic tourist events or activities.
You can go, you can get on one of these little boats.
And go through the city and enjoy sometimes the performances.
Because when you visit that place, there are parades on the water.
So imagine a parade like the ones in the Disneyland.
But it's on the boat, on the water.
Yeah.
This city, Shaoxing, preserves... kind of a Song Dynasty era spatial layout.
What that means is you've got your traditional neighborhoods, you've got your natural landscapes that still make up around one third of the historic urban area.
I watched a video about the city this morning.
They call it the City of Bridges because it has more than 10000 bridges, including 600 historic bridges.
It has been called the City of Calligraphy.
There's a lot of beautiful calligraphy to be seen there.
The City of Water, you mentioned that already.
And also they call it the City of Scholars.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
Because they have so many well-known figures that was maybe lived in there or born and raised there.
And I think that's also one of the reasons that it's called the calligraphy city, because there is a legendary calligrapher called Wang Xizhi, who is given birth to that place, and patriotic poet Lu You, philosopher Wang Yangming, also literary giant Lu Xun.
That is, I think, now the iconic image of Shaoxing right now, because he's so famous in Chinese literature.
And kind of his favorite, let's say drinks and maybe food, are also now well-known cuisines in Shaoxing.
So that's why a lot of visitors they are paying a visit to Shaoxing to Maybe sometimes to visit the former residents of, like Yushun mentioned the Chinese author Lu Xun.
And in 2025, a lot of people did visit there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
In 2025, during the Labor Day holiday, the city of Shaoxing welcomed 37 million visitors and that generated nearly 4 billion yuan in tourism revenue.
So that's around That's over $500 million.
So you can see how these historic and cultural sites they are attracting an increasing number of especially young visitors as well.
They are into this historic charm of these places.
Those numbers you just mentioned.
In terms of tourism revenue, that was up 19 percent from the previous year.
And we share these numbers with you to kind of illustrate that.
The fact that these are very popular places for people to visit.
By the way, if I didn't mention it already, if we didn't mention it, Shaoxing it's about, I think you can take a train from Shanghai in maybe an hour or two, depending on where you get off within the city.
But yeah, it's south of Shanghai, not very far away at all.
So that's one example.
Another, we go even further south, but a little bit more inland for Foshan.
Foshan is kind of also a national historic and cultural city with more than a thousand years of history as well.
Is this part of Guangzhou, by the way?
Because if you look on a map I looked on a map this morning and Foshan it looks like if it's not a part of Guangzhou, it must be immediately next.
Adjacent.
Yeah, it's got to be like its immediate neighbor.
It's next to Guangzhou and you can actually take a subway to Foshan from Guangzhou.
Yes, they have all connected these intercity metro lines and everything.
And why it is so special is that one of the things that makes Foshan special is it still preserves many neighborhoods built during the Ming and Qing dynasties, roughly between the 14th and also early 20th centuries.
The architecture is very, very different from what people might imagine when they think of grand imperial palaces in Beijing.
Because instead, Foshan reflects the everyday style of southern China, or known as the Lingnan style.
Lingnan architecture.
Yeah.
And I noticed that also food is another attraction for this place.
I mean, in Foshan or Shunde to be more particular.
Shunde, that's the district that's kind of the culinary capital.
Yeah, and it was designated as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy.
So that makes Foshan one of the country's most recognized food destinations.
And I have looked into some of the signature food.
It includes shunde, yusheng, so that's like a sashimi, the sliced fish, like paper thin.
And that's very, I haven't tried it yet, but that's very delicious.
Delicious, according to some of the netizens.
And also steamed pork in Jun'an style.
So that's like a whole pig that is like firm.
I think it's braised and they are like steamed.
The pork is very, very juicy.
I watched a video this morning.
Some tourist was trying Changfeng.
I guess it's kind of a liquefied rice.
Am I right about that?
It's not liquefied.
Because they poured like a white something onto a large pan and then it makes this very thin layer of almost like a dumpling, like that kind of texture.
And then you just put, I guess, whatever you want, like shrimp and chives or whatever, and then they kind of roll it up, they chop it up, they put some sauce on it.
Oh my goodness, that looks so good.
Now, this would be Cantonese food, right?
And if you're a listener from maybe the United States or a place where American-style Chinese food is popular, Cantonese food would be the closest thing to that.
So a little bit different maybe than the styles we'd find up here in the north in Beijing.
That's cool, though.
So Foshan is not that far from Guangzhou.
Famous for food, famous for its architecture as well.
Famous for a lot of different things.
Now, let's talk about the challenges that these cities are facing, because we know that...
There's proof through the numbers, right?
We just learned some of the numbers that these cities are popular destinations for people to go.
Foshan, if we didn't mention that, 55.85 million visitors, 53 billion yuan in revenue.
That's about 7 billion plus dollars in tourism revenue, up 60% year on year.
So if we're seeing more tourists traveling there, if we're seeing more money spent there, then what are some of the difficulties?
I guess what I'm saying is, why are we talking about this today?
What's the issue?
What's the problem?
Yeah that's, I think, one of the challenges where we are going to talk about.
Historic and cultural cities are still attracting huge crowds and people are visiting there.
But many are discovering that popularity doesn't automatically translate into long-term success.
And they are facing some of very big challenges.
One interesting question is why some of these ancient towns in China are struggling today, even though many of them look visually beautiful.
I think some of them are quite different from what we're talking about, about Shaoxing and Foshan, because they are like historically ancient and historically enriched culture.
But on...
For some other business districts or no, they're actually like cultural and historical districts.
On the surface, a lot of them look very well designed and the streets are clean, and buildings are neatly restored or even newly built in tradition styles.
And everything looks like a perfect version of old China.
But sometimes that's exactly the problem, because what they often lack is these kind of real historical depth.
Because in some cases these so-called ancient towns are more like carefully constructed sets.
The architecture might imitate Ming and Qing styles, but the buildings themselves are new.
And, more importantly, there may be very little real cultural memory attached to them, which means that no actual meaningful stories or no lived history, no connection to that kind of real people across generations.
So what you're saying is that for a historical spot there and in order to attract more visitors, you're building Ming and Qing dynasty architecture style there, but it's not originally the real buildings from the past.
So when visitors walk through them, they might feel that everything looks nice, but somehow it feels empty.
It looks like history, but it doesn't feel like history.
And that is a very key difference, because real ancient cities or towns, places like Shaoxing and Foshan, carry layers of time.
And the streets are not just designed to look old.
They are old itself.
The stories, the people and traditions are still embedded in their everyday life.
For example, we didn't. mentioned that iconic architectural style in Foshan.
But the thing I would like to mention is that the styles in their architecture or in their buildings and houses, it is very specially designed.
But maybe...
There is special design for their ventilation because of their location.
It has a lot of rain and humid.
And that's why they want their houses to be having these kind of gray bricks and that different style of roof, so that you can walk around under the roofs even though there are a lot of rains and the ventilation system is very good, so that they can keep the environment of living comfortable.
So it has a reason or has the actual history That is distinct to Foshan.
Exactly.
But for some other historical ancient towns that is designed only for having commercial and business districts in there.
And that is why I think a lot of young people they started to realize okay, it is quite famous for being an ancient town and I visited there.
And then I realized okay, it is not so different from other ancient towns in other cities.
Yes, I think that's the common issues for many of the historic destinations across the country.
Because when you go to a historic town and you will meet a lot of like dining options that are exactly the same, or the food stalls, they're selling the same food.
So it seems formulaic formulaic, and they are replicating the same formula like it's a model.
It's a model and it can be uh, profitable in a short term, but for the longer term, people are.
People want to see something more distinctive, that is more native to this particular place, instead of all the same like you can find it anywhere else in this country.
But we're not saying that it is just that bad, because it feels like it is kind of a standardization of a business model of an ancient town.
It is good that, of course, they will spend a lot of money and they will have to discover some of the historical stories in this ancient town.
Otherwise, it will be just totally playing of this ancient town.
So first thing, the city or this district will have to discover the historical charm of this place.
And another thing is that I think it is how people are realizing that the beauty of ancient chino, ancient architectural style in there, and that's why people are, you know, keep visiting these kind of places.
I think i understand what you're talking about and we'll get to um, you know, the revenue side of things for these, for these streets or for these towns, in just a moment.
But I think from what you just described, I think I saw both things on display in Chengdu.
Are you familiar with the Wushou Shrine in Chengdu?
It's where oh, I'm gonna say his name wrong and I apologize it's a tomb Liu Bei.
Liu Bei's tomb is there.
And you pay an entrance fee for that.
I think it's around 50 or 60 yuan or something like that.
And it's this beautiful kind of mini park where you have all of these beautiful trees and flowers, and then you have this very social media-worthy red wall that everybody just takes pictures there.
And there's water flowing and birds chirping, and it's beautiful.
And there's a little museum in there where you get to learn a little bit about the history that character
And his brothers, Liu Bai's brothers, apparently the Three Kingdoms story, which has been talked about in movies and video games and over and over again.
What a wonderful experience that was.
Right next to that, you have the Jinli Ancient Street.
And the Jinli Ancient Street is kind of, Xingyu, what you were just talking about.
Commercialized?
Very commercial, but that's not my mini tourist complaint.
And please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to criticize the country.
I'm trying to be constructive.
It felt like any ancient street that I could find in another city, very similar to what I could find here in Beijing.
You know, same shops selling the same foods, selling the same teas and that type of stuff.
And those are literally right next to each other.
That tomb, what an incredible experience that was.
If you go to Chengdu, check it out.
But I guess that's part of the issue here is that and let's talk about the revenue side now is that for these ancient districts, ancient towns, ancient streets, they have to survive, and they have to survive by impressing the tourists who visit there.
And I guess part of the challenge is to charge entrance fees or not.
There's a trade-off.
Yes.
Right?
The trade-off is if you charge an entrance fee, you might have fewer visitors.
But if you don't charge an entrance fee, then you're going to have more visitors but lower revenue.
Right.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's not that easy for these ancient places to design themselves in a way.
Come up with a strategy that would be popular with everyone.
What do you think about that?
That's just kind of my like expat tourist point of view.
Yeah, I think for not only expats, but also other tourists from other cities, when they get into these areas, they will look, okay, it looks different.
And it is recommended online.
So I will pay a visit.
But when you get into that place and you realize that was not different from other ancient towns in China, you would kind of feel a little bit bummer.
But the thing is that, do you need that?
Yes, of course, because they have really good bubble tea beverages and good tasting maybe sausages and local delicacies.
That is, I think, the form of now modern business are showcasing.
But sometimes, at least, they're kind of blending into that historical set.
So I think that is the way a lot of these historical or ancient towns, they're trying to...
Balance.
Of course, they want to attract more people to get in there.
And then that is also the way to make a profit when you have to invite a lot of shops and stores in there.
Well, Gen Z is the main driver of tourism.
So what is it exactly that Gen Z is looking for in their travels these days?
Yeah, so according to reports, actually Gen Zers, they have very different expectations from the previous generation.
According to a 2025 report released by online travel agency shows that 18 to 35-year-old travelers already account for 65 of the total trips.
And another report revealed that the international travel spending of Gen Zers is expected to keep rising rapidly, surpassing 40.
$6,400 a year on trips.
And that surpasses all other generations in 2026.
Okay.
Yeah, that's great.
So the numbers are strong with the tourists.
But what are they looking for, though?
What do they want from the experience?
I'm curious.
I guess in the past, when we think about the historical sites, we are there to learn some history.
But for these younger travelers?
They're there to pursue some personal experience or emotional comfort.
Or even self-expression, maybe some very photogenic spots for them to take some photos for their social media accounts.
I mean the younger generation.
They want something that is more relatable and more interactive and also emotionally engaging.
What do you think, Yuxin, about that?
Do you agree?
Yes.
As a Gen Z?
I think so.
When you travel, yeah?
But it is a little bit stereotypical to people that okay, now Gen Z, they only want fashionable things.
They only want to take pictures when they visit a place.
But, of course, the essence of a lot of these historical places.
They are, I think, the key to attract more people to get into that place because,
At the end of the day, it's the title of that place will be maybe the ancestral hall of that family.
And that's why people would pay a visit to there, because they want to see the real ancient, maybe his culture and also story.
The things that made that place what it is.
So then, what would the advice be for these historical districts, historical towns, historical streets?
How to keep up, how to stay relevant then?
I guess one of them is to focus on one memorable chapter of history, especially for these historical cities.
Instead of, Like painting all of the like the big landscape, maybe focus on just one memorable story and then turn it into something more immersive or interactive for these visitors.
Like the city that I visited last year, I guess it's Datong.
It's also an Asian city.
And it has a history of over a thousand years.
And when I got there, I found an interesting phenomenon.
There is a giant modern store built inside the ancient city.
But the store.
Outside of it a line of young people.
They're lining up, queuing up for long hours to get inside and what's inside is like a cultural and creative product.
It's a big ip.
Now in datong is called because the city is famous for its buddhist like temples inside a big city and also the yungang grottos.
It's very famous grotto sites there and the IP character is inspired by the smiling Buddhist.
And it turned into like a plush toy.
And that's very, very popular.
So like every tourist who goes there has to buy one when you go back home.
So that makes...
It makes it very, very successful and also a big attraction.
And that somehow turns into like young people go there, they take pictures and they also buy some of the drinks inspired by this particular IP.
And they stay there for a longer time and spend more.
Build your businesses around the thing that makes that place what it is.
Yes, exactly.
Make the stories and also historical figures and the culture feel human, not untouchable.
Or just blended and integrated into everyday live experiences and make people feel that it is an authentic place.
Well, the good news is that there are so many wonderful stories that can be told that can be taken advantage of in the sense of attracting more people to visit towns and villages and cities in general.
And if you ever have the opportunity to travel outside of the bigger cities, when you do visit China, make sure you do it, because there is so much to see and there's even more to learn, that's for sure.
