On December 29, the author saw a lot of people visiting in Rucheng Hot Spring Town, such as China Hot Spring Exhibition Hall, Fuquan Villa, Tanghe Old Street, and so on attracted so many visitors.

The hot spring town is only one of the epitomes of Rucheng County's characteristic town to promote global tourism. In the past two years, Rucheng County has persisted in taking the whole county as a big scenic spot, relying on the county's characteristic resources, humanities and industry, scientifically compiled the development plan of characteristic towns, created a number of characteristic towns with bright characteristics, strong industry and beautiful environment, and stepped out of a new road of urbanization that promoted the global tourism with characteristic towns. Hot spring town has been selected as the first batch of characteristic towns and itown-industry integration development demonstration towns in China.

In order to improve the quality of tourism in characteristic towns, Rucheng County has increased investment, invested 1.49 billion yuan to implement a large number of infrastructure projects in the towns, continued to promote urban and rural greening, rural environmental governance, and greatly improved the outlook of villages and towns. At the same time, the county has highlighted the cultural characteristics, excavated the cultural connotation, protected the historic and storied sites and relics, built farmhouse accommodation and manor experience in various characteristic towns, focused on the planning and construction of Jinshan Modern Ecological Agricultural Park, Yuewang Ecological Farm, Spring Rulian Tea Farm and other manors, and developed the first and second industries to promote the healthy and sustainable development of the economy in characteristic town.

Rucheng County has also taken a series of festival activities as the carrier to enrich the tourism pattern, speed up the deep integration of characteristic towns and global tourism, and enhance the brand and popularity of characteristic towns.The first Lotus Culture Festival in Rucheng was held in combination with the resources of ancestral temple and lotus base in Tuqiao Town; the International Art Festival of "Chinese Image, Beautiful Rucheng" was held by exploring the national characteristics and unique customs of Sanjiangkou Town; the characteristic folk activities were held for three consecutive years relying on the hot spring culture resources in Hot Spring Town; the 2017 China (Hunan) Red Tourism Cultural Festival was held with the wide spread of the story of "half quilt" in Shazhou Village.

Driven by the construction of characteristic towns, the red culture, hot springs, ancient color science and green ecology have become a brand-new tourism experience in Rucheng characteristic towns, attracting tourists from all over the world to come for sightseeing, leisure and vacation. In 2017, nearly 5 million tourists were received by characteristic towns from January to November, becoming a new engine for tourism development throughout the world.