Crayfish Drive Small County's Economic Growth

The 23rd China Xuyi International Crayfish Festival opened on June 12, in Xuyi County of Huai'an, east China's Jiangsu province. The festival is divided into four parts consisting of 24 activities, including a crayfish banquet for 10,000 people and a traditional wedding on water among others.

The crayfish banquet for 10,000 people [Photo by Xi Changyin]

There are a total of 210,000 residents working in crayfish industry in Xuyi, a riverside county. From crayfish shops to chain processing factories, from a single flavor to the promotion of a standard flavoring system, Xuyi has found a comprehensive development path for tourism which combines crayfish industry with other tourism resources.

The crayfish festival in Xuyi has been extended into an economic and trade festival, an investment promotion festival, a tourism festival, and a cultural festival. It is closely connected with the income of local residents, becoming an important lever to drive high-quality social and economic development. Xuyi takes advantage of crayfish to make friends and attract investment, turning crayfish into its golden brand and becoming a highly profitable industry.

International friends displaying the crayfish they caught in a field of "Symbiosis of Rice and Crayfish" [Photo by Yang Hongze]

In order to explore more development space for crayfish industry, the government of Xuyi has formulated a series of standards to incorporate crayfish throughout the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, hoping to improve local tourism and service industry. The "Symbiosis of Rice and Crayfish" is an ecological and efficient agricultural model developed by Xuyi, which achieves "dual uses of one water resource and dual harvest of one field", injecting continuous energy into the development of the county on its way to build a national modern agricultural industrial park and an industrial cluster with advantageous characteristics, and become a town with advanced agricultural industries.

The crayfish feast in Xuyi [Photo by Li Yan]

At the same time, Xuyi vigorously promoted the second-round development of crayfish industry, trying to seize the new opportunities created by prefabricated vegetable industry which is worth over CNY one trillion, as well as opportunities in construction bases, agricultural product processing, product sales, and festival-related celebrations.

Next, Xuyi will take the festival as a platform to focus on cutting-edge technologies, discuss hot topics, and look forward to industry trends, striving to make the tastes of Xuyi crayfish lingering in the mouth of more visitors.