Dawa is an unconventional host and his house in Trashigang, a village of less than 350 people in Lulang Town in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, is also bound to look unusual to many of the visitors.

The two-story stone house with its beautiful red main door ornamented with carved metal and an exquisitely painted wooden lintel in the traditional Tibetan style stands in a neat little row of similar houses out of which men and women in traditional Tibetan clothes come and go about their daily business. The shingle outside says Yu Zhen Family Hotel.

Family hotel village

Family is the keyword. In this village of 66 households, there are 51 family inns—or homestays—developed with the support of the local government to supplement farming and create a trail of economic development. The beautiful natural scenery, local products and traditional Tibetan architecture give the village its unique selling points, as well as convenient transportation, thanks to its closeness to National Highway 318, and telecommunication network.

Dawa, who like many Tibetans has only one name, welcomes guests to his house and hotel by draping white silk scarves around their necks, another tradition. A narrow path, flanked by a small garden on one side and an altar of family deities on the other, leads inside the house to a flight of narrow stairs. They are steep and dark but when the visitor maneuvers them cautiously and climbs up, a spectacular sight awaits.

The long rectangular living room, fit for a king, is lit by natural daylight that floods in through the perfectly proportioned large windows, which are in plenty. Inside, the walls are covered with beautifully carved and painted wood in a dazzling variety of red, blue, green, brown and white. Above the similarly painted Tibetan sofas hangs a delicately carved and painted zhamunie, a six-stringed guitar-like musical instrument. Dawa plucks it off the wall and begins to strum it, humming along as his daughter flits from guest to guest, offering Tibetan tea and a kind of hard and slightly sour Tibetan candy made of yak milk.

He started the homestay in 2012, with his wife, son and daughter helping him. They get about 30 guests per month through the Internet, social media and local government efforts. On the beautiful traditional mantelpiece lies a bit of the 21st century, the familiar QR code, indicating guests can make their payments digitally. There are six rooms with 18 beds altogether and a visitor pays only 50 yuan ($7.27) per day.

Dawa also sells local products like za xiang, traditional incense that is believed to have healing properties, and health drinks and balms made of local herbs. The steep staircase has its use too. Local handicrafts, including bags made from traditional cloth and fiber, hang from the wall, ready to be sold to whoever fancies them.

A nearby center also provides a sales outlet for handicrafts, traditional Tibetan medicinal products, calligraphy and incense made by local residents. In 2018, the little village received more than 75,000 tourists and the family inns contributed the lion's share of the increased revenue from 2017, over $425,000.

Entrepreneur Qin Lei, who has developed an app to guide tourists as well as products like Tibetan yak milk ice cream, in Maker Space in Lulang, Tibet, on June 11(COURTESY PHOTO)

New destination

The local authorities are developing Lulang as a new tourism destination. Lulang, meaning where the immortals live, has built a reputation as a natural oxygen bar, thanks to the pollution-free environment and the abundance of greenery.

"Lhasa is the most famous place in Tibet but you see few trees once you go there," said Wu Xin, an official from Beijing who has been deputed to Lulang to help develop the area, part of the drive to eradicate poverty in the country by 2020. "This is a good place to transit and acclimatize before going to Lhasa, which is at a higher altitude. The rarefied air there is known to give unaccustomed travelers a headache and even altitude sickness."

Wu, an architect, is teaching local families to integrate sustainable elements of Han architecture, like the famous dougong brackets, which are used to fortify roofs or beams. The brackets do not use nails but ingeniously devised joints and the pieces fit into one another like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This provides important support for architecture, especially in an earthquake-prone area.

"The village is on the edge of a fault line," Wu said. "So the government is taking precautions to preserve the fragile environment. As a result, the number of daily visitors to the area is limited."

While Trashigang is a destination for the budget traveler, the Lulang International Tourism Town, developed with the assistance of Guangdong Province in south China as part of the program of developed regions helping less developed areas, boasts three five-star hotels. They were built by three leading enterprises, two of which are from Guangdong, including Evergrande, one of China's largest property developers. The emphasis is on showcasing Tibetan culture, natural ecology and tranquility with all the modern conveniences. The project, inaugurated in 2017, has an investment of $567 million and the number of tourists since it started has exceeded 1 million, according to local government data.

Tourism driver

Qin Lei may have contributed to that. The 36-year-old entrepreneur from Guangdong arrived in the town on a trip seven years ago, fell in love with the place, and since then, has been shuttling between Lulang and Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong, both of which are now his home. The tourism major developed an app, Zhihui Linzhi, which gives users videos and all the tourist information they might want, from cultural activities to hotel details to sightseeing and shopping.

"I started with a capital of 10 million yuan ($1.45 million) and today, we have a staff of about 100 people," Qin said. "We plan to expand the app to provide tourist guides to other cities like Beijing."

He has spread into other businesses as well. In Lulang's Maker Space, a center to boost tourism-related industries which showcases local specialties like handicrafts and forest products, a kiosk sells Tibetan yak milk ice cream. The Nuobooland brand makes its products in a factory in Lhasa. Qin has other local snacks in his product kit like Champin, biscuits made of barley. He buys the yak milk and barley from local farmers.

Agricultural products like barley are being used to build up a local brand and promote local tourism. In another village, Gala, the peach is the signature product. Also known as peach blossom village, Gala takes part in a peach blossom cultural tourism festival, which is in its 17th year. Official data showed more than 100,000 visitors attended the festival this year, with the revenue from the event alone over $436,000.

But perhaps what makes the village and town stand apart is the aura of tranquility and the welcome they project. Many entrepreneurs like Qin have made the area their second home. Wu talks of another traveler surnamed Jiang who arrived in Lulang one summer to do seasonal work with the locals, make some money and then go back home.

"At the end of a hard day's work, when he was dead tired, he saw a double rainbow in the sky," Wu said. "It's an auspicious sign and it made Jiang think this is a lucky place to settle down. He is still here."

Copyedited by Rebeca Toledo

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