"Ginkgo village" in southwest China a hit among tourists

A village featuring swaths of ginkgo trees has become a hot tourist destination for visitors to southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The village is located in Jiangdong Community, in the city of Tengchong, and features dozens of small rural houses nestling amid more than 30,000 ginkgo trees, with 667 hectares of natural ginkgo forest in the area.

With the arrival of autumn, the leaves on the trees turn yellow, attracting crowds of tourists eager to catch a glimpse of this pretty spectacle.

The village struggled with poverty for many years due to its remoteness and poor infrastructure.

However, after the local government decided to promote rural tourism in Jiangdong, the residents began to convert their dwellings into rural family inns. The number of homestays grew from 8 to 142, while the number of beds available to tourists increased from 20 to more than 1,100.

Last year, the village attracted 420,000 visitors, generating tourism revenue of 70.5 million yuan (10.6 million U.S. dollars). Meanwhile, the number of impoverished people has decreased from 2,520 in 2010 to just 72.