Traveling north along the Shenhai Expressway, the scenery outside the window gradually shifts from continuous skyscrapers to vast plains. As a native of Funing who lives and works in Shanghai year-round, returning home for the Spring Festival each year provides a tangible sense of the changes in my hometown. Funing is located in the central Jianghuai Plain of Jiangsu, a typical region of rivers and fertile land, and a county-level city steadily rising in the northern part of the Yangtze River Delta. It retains the gentle tones of traditional farming culture while also exuding a modern atmosphere of industrial acceleration and industrial clustering. Through its quiet transformation, it showcases the most authentic face of county-level economies in northern Jiangsu. This year, I sought to look beyond the bustling firecrackers and record the "stillness" and "movement" of this small city in the midst of everyday life.
1. Fewer People? The most immediate impression of Funing's urban area this Spring Festival was the noticeable reduction in street traffic and a significant decrease in congestion in the old town. Gone were the long queues on the return highway and the struggle to find parking along the Sheyang River. The overall pace of the holiday felt more relaxed. Many relatives and friends mentioned that several families around them had opted for "reverse migration" for the New Year—young people working outside the county brought their parents to their city of employment for reunion, rather than returning en masse to the county town. This directly led to a decline in the number of returning visitors.
In fact, Funing is transitioning from a traditional labor-exporting county to a regional node with two-way population movement. In the past, those working outside primarily engaged in migratory labor, returning集中 during the Spring Festival. Now, an increasing number of young people are settling stably in larger cities within the Yangtze River Delta, completing the transition from migrant workers to new urban residents, and gaining the ability to host their families for the holiday in their new homes. Enhanced employment capacity has stabilized the previously declining resident population, while deeper cross-regional urbanization has shifted the reunion settings for some families.
The perception of "fewer people" in the county town during the Spring Festival may not indicate population loss or diminished appeal, but rather a normal manifestation of urbanization reaching a more advanced stage. Population movement is no longer a one-way outflow and集中 return, but a more balanced and rational two-way flow between urban and rural areas, and between cities. Although the number of returning visitors decreased, places like Miaowan Ancient Town, Xingguo Temple Square, and Xinsheng Street were still filled with strong festive atmosphere. Local residents, combined with a smaller number of returning visitors, formed the main force of holiday consumption. The more spacious urban leisure spaces and more stable public order also reflect, from another angle, the improved maturity of county infrastructure and quality of life.
2. Prices Up? The most prominent feature of Funing's consumer market this Spring Festival was the significant price increase in service-based consumption, yet demand remained strong, presenting a picture of "rising prices and rising volume." A two-hour session in a small KTV room cost nearly 800 yuan after discounts, movie ticket prices generally ranged from 60 to 80 yuan with screenings mostly full, per capita spending at hot pot restaurants rose from around 50 yuan to approximately 80 yuan, and street snacks and fried skewers also saw widespread price hikes. Even so, popular establishments still had long queues.
This phenomenon aligns closely with the county's macroeconomic data. According to the *Funing County Government Work Report* for 2025, Funing's GDP is expected to exceed 80 billion yuan, having crossed three 10-billion-yuan thresholds in five years, steadily advancing towards the status of a "100-billion-yuan county." The per capita disposable income of all residents reached 38,350 yuan, the urban-rural income gap continued to narrow, and residents' consumption capacity and willingness strengthened simultaneously.
From a macro perspective, the coexistence of price increases and strong demand for Spring Festival services is essentially the result of rigidly insufficient supply in the county's tertiary sector coupled with the集中 release of holiday demand. The supply of high-quality entertainment options like KTVs, cinemas, chain restaurants, and parent-child activities within the county is relatively limited, constituting scarce consumption scenarios. The short-term集中爆发 of leisure demand from both returning populations and local residents during the holiday leads to a supply-demand imbalance that directly pushes up prices. Concurrently, rising resident incomes and increased acceptance of ceremonial and experiential spending for the festival also support this wave of consumption fervor.
Thus, Funing's consumer market may be entering a stage of structural upgrading, shifting from a focus on goods consumption to a balance between goods and services. The rapid rise of experiential consumption like dining and entertainment is both a direct reflection of the increasing proportion of the tertiary industry and an important indicator of continuously expanding domestic demand. The short-term price increases also serve as a reminder that there is still significant room for improvement in the county's service sector. Increasing the supply of high-quality, affordable, and diverse leisure options in the future could be a key direction for activating county-level consumption.
3. Scenery Cooled? Amid the nationwide "cultural tourism fever," Funing has also proposed a vision of "revitalizing the county through culture and tourism," focusing on building the Jinsha Lake National Tourist Resort, which includes facilities like a ski resort, VR experience projects, and a hot spring center, with substantial investment and high construction standards. However, based on actual operations during the Spring Festival, tourist numbers at Jinsha Lake and other scenic spots were relatively limited, forming a sharp contrast with the bustling atmosphere of urban areas like Miaowan Ancient Town and Xinsheng Street. Down-to-earth scenes for strolling, eating, relaxing, and playing were far more popular among locals and returning visitors than standardized vacation projects. What those returning home seek is not uniform, standardized attractions, but the unique memories and flavors specific to their hometown.
This reveals that the core challenge for county-level cultural tourism development often lies not only in insufficient resource endowment but also in a mismatch between product positioning and actual demand. Funing possesses cultural tourism resources such as the Jinsha Lake 4A-level scenic area, Miaowan Ancient Town, Yukou Ancient Town, and the Colorful Agriculture Park, with a solid ecological and cultural foundation conducive to tourism development. However, the core consumer group during the Spring Festival consists mainly of local families and returning youth, who prefer low-cost, highly interactive, and lifestyle-oriented leisure settings, with limited demand for vacation products targeting out-of-town tourists or tour groups.
Similarly, many counties tend to develop path dependence in cultural tourism: emphasizing hardware investment over scene operation, focusing on scenic area creation over neighborhood revitalization, and prioritizing sightseeing check-ins over daily consumption. Funing may face similar issues. Looking at the county's overall economic structure, industry remains the foundation of development, with the total output value of industries above a designated size exceeding 54 billion yuan. A strong industrial base is both the current reality and the ballast for tax revenue and employment. The core value of cultural tourism likely lies in enhancing urban quality, enriching consumption scenarios, and expanding the city's brand, rather than abruptly replacing industry as the pillar.
For Funing, the key to breaking through in cultural tourism may not lie in further expanding investment and building new projects, but in revitalizing existing resources and strengthening scene adaptation and IP creation. Integrating elements like Miaowan Ancient Town, local cuisine, and Lixiahe folk customs into experienceable, communicable, and repeatable local characteristic IPs, and promoting the linked development of scenic areas, streets, and communities, using lifestyle-oriented, vibrant content to attract locals and retain returning visitors, might be more sustainable than pursuing high-end or trendy/viral appeal.
Conclusion: As the Spring Festival drew to a close, I walked again through the lively Xinsheng Street. On one side were the data of steady industrial progress, on the other the vivid daily life of the city; on one side were high-standard scenic areas, on the other the bustling old streets. The answers to county-level development often lie in this kind of balance. There's no need to choose between industry and cultural tourism, or to forcibly trade scale for local flavor. Allowing industry to have speed, life to have warmth, data to have support, and the human world to have vitality—this is the most enduring competitiveness of a small city.