Boluo Heritage Talk Roundtable
On 13th May, NATUREHERIT was invited for a special Heritage Talk roundtable enabled by Chinese mass medias Toutiao.Com and China.Org in the mountainy area of Boluo County, Huizhou City, Guangdong Province. With deep mountainy region, Boluo has been known as a green retreat in a long history and homes of then merchants of the Maritime Silkroad since a millenium.
With Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou as nearby major metropolises, Boluo still keeps its mysterious villages and countrysides with friendly, low-profile and nature-loving hosts. Visits of the merchants' villages were impressive with authentic Ming Dynasty dwellings of the southern Chinese regions.
Although major interests of the roundtable were about tourism development, the debates became more about the preservation and transformation of heritages in local towns and villages. Redevelopment designs have to answer essential questions such as, how to keep authentic local territories with traditional economies and upgrade with new programs and needs, how to attract younger generation of local residents to come back and new migration. The Linking-Up Place strategy would be especially interesting for local Nature-based Solutions with water and greening systems, imbed local voices while co-creating new developments.
The next move of Chinese rural cities and places could have many synergies with European cities and regions to exchange both experiences.
The values for linking up heritages would be awarded by the to-be-discovered travel market with growing curiosity of mutual human roots of the Orient and the West.
