Zhi Yi: Technology is a tool.Local culture is the foundation.

Discussing tourism storytelling, Zhi Yi points first to a familiar problem: too much emphasis on check-in spots rather than culture, and on traffic rather than experience. A city gets reduced to a few attractions and picturesque shots. They may briefly attract attention without helping visitors understand the place.

“We have always held that content is the core productive force of culture and tourism.” To him, that means more than accumulating material. It means uncovering a place’s history, street life, character and intangible heritage, then arranging those details into stories grounded in daily life and lived experience.

This also informs his understanding of tourism in the Chinese context. Tourism is not merely sightseeing and spending: it holds cultural, spiritual and social value. A destination should distinguish itself by knowing its authentic qualities, not by copying whatever is trending online.

How should this content reach audiences? He explains that China National Travel develops deeper perspectives through local special issues, cover stories, travel writing, cultural features and heritage columns, then connects them with digital channels and industry resources.

Professional storytelling and wider public communication are not competing paths. The first determines how a city is represented; the second helps those stories travel. What needs to accumulate over time is not just exposure, but genuine understanding and attachment to local culture.

Asked about a particularly memorable project, Zhi Yi points to the China National Travel Shichahai special issue published in May 2024.

Rather than simply producing travel photography or destination promotion, the project proposed an idea: “One publication can help stimulate a local economy.” Its question was not only how to introduce Shichahai, but how readers could connect with the real life of the neighbourhood after learning about it.

According to Zhi Yi, the local authorities coordinated participation from more than a dozen area businesses. They developed linked consumer offers, cross-promotion and visitor referrals. The publication thus became more than a description of a destination: it was a bridge between content, merchants and visitors.

For Zhi Yi, the experiment moved tourism content from telling stories toward supporting industry. Media influence could help connect offline visits and consumption rather than simply make people aware of a place.

This cannot be accomplished by an editorial team alone. He stresses that tourism agencies, museums and heritage bodies, attractions and specialist creative teams all need clear, sustained roles. Selecting materials, refining stories, checking compliance and promoting work belong in one coordinated process.

That is what he means by industry collaboration: a published article is not the endpoint. Communication should connect with what a destination can actually offer, leaving room for continued operation and cooperation.

If the Shichahai issue explored how content can connect to consumption, the “Treasure Towns” initiative asks a question about time: after a smaller city is noticed, how can it remain compelling?

According to written material supplied by Zhi Yi, his team and a Douyin team launched the initiative in late 2025. The first group received recognition on April 17, 2026. Public reporting said that 36 cities from 19 provincial-level regions were selected.

“We are not simply giving out plaques,” he says. The initiative proposes continuing support, assessment criteria, town-specific benefits, periodic evaluation and regular communication. Content planning, short-form video and industry links are intended to help shift from chasing traffic toward building lasting place-brand assets.

For a concrete example, he describes Kulun Banner in Inner Mongolia, one of the early county-level participants. Initial communication highlighted the area’s desert scenery, Andai dance traditions and buckwheat culture, using themed stories and digital media to give the place a distinct identity.

But he does not equate early popularity with a completed operating model. “We are still transitioning from hotspot communication to a systematic, long-term IP operation,” he says.

The team is now structuring firsthand field material about the desert, intangible heritage and buckwheat into a local tourism resource library. With local partners, it continues developing thematic routes, cultural products and seasonal events. Recognisable cultural features need to become reusable, evolving resources supported by stable collaboration.

“We are still moving this forward, and time will tell.”

This candid qualification matters. Kulun Banner is not presented as a finished success story for long-term tourism operations, but as an ongoing transition. Whether visibility becomes durable content, products and partnerships remains to be tested in practice.

When the ZOTAIX team asked about cultural tourism in Renhuai, Zhi Yi did not recommend beginning with a grand city-brand campaign. He advised starting small, with a distinctive and practical entry point.

In his written response, he suggested building on intangible cultural heritage and using industrial tourism to explore immersive experiences of baijiu-making culture. Workshops, fermentation pits and traditional starter-making at local distilleries could help visitors see, understand and lightly participate in the processes described in brochures.

He also warned against turning distillery visits into another superficial photo opportunity. The authenticity of the place of origin matters; artificially reconstructed historical scenes can undermine it. Industrial tourism should help visitors understand the local craft and build trust in the region, rather than distract from the core business.

In a later exchange he narrowed the idea further: start with one small but meaningful city-IP product or experience, one lightweight project that people can try and share, in partnership with local distilleries. Expand industry collaboration only after the first real experiment works.

For a young team, the implication is to make one specific undertaking work before trying to cover an entire city. Whether its culture is communicated well, whether people participate and whether local industry supports it can all be examined through a small practical trial.

Asked about AI agents, digital content and personalised cultural products, Zhi Yi begins not with specifications but with purpose: reduce the cost of managing local cultural IP, improve visitor experiences and make better use of cultural resources that already exist.

His written answers identify heritage digitisation and links between museums and tourism as promising pilot areas. In follow-up comments, he makes the small-scale approach more concrete through three practical experiments.

First, build a focused, lightweight AI agent around a local tourism knowledge base. Structured, authoritative sources can support destination-specific guidance, itinerary suggestions and cultural explanations, without an attempt to build an all-purpose system at the outset.

Second, use AI to assist digital content production. Scripts, audio and online exhibitions can be created more efficiently with tools, but professional teams must continue verifying historical and cultural accuracy, allowing more of the budget to go toward field research.

Third, build a small library of cultural visual elements. Visitors could combine them into their own digital souvenirs, or order small runs of personalised physical objects, connecting keepsakes to their individual experiences.

All three approaches begin with local culture and then select appropriate technologies and product forms. Zhi Yi cautions against rushing into capital-intensive hardware, digital exhibition halls or enormous virtual environments, or merely attaching local names to generic AI experiences without trusted content behind them.

Digital technology should enrich offline cultural and industrial experiences, not become a disconnected demonstration. He sums up the principle as: “Content first, start light, make a small complete loop work, then expand step by step.”