Discovering Rural Scenery Along Travel Routes

Six boutique sites along two high-quality travel routes in Hunan have been selected into national lists of 60 spring travel routes and 189 quality scenic sites released on a beautiful countryside leisure tourism promotion event (spring) by the Rural Industry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.


Boutique Site 1: Wild Planet Valley Camp

The Wild Planet Valley Camp is located in Tongmu Village, Lianhua Town, Yuelu District, Changsha. It is a new project developed by Lianhua Shuzhai Homestay. The camp spans a 20,000-square-meter valley area and offers a range of facilities including a Cafe Racer vintage motorcycle café, an art museum, a sensory park with unpowered play equipment, a petting zoo area, a free camping zone, luxury tent hotel accommodations, and the Lianhua Shuzhai Homestay. The site has developed a unique natural aesthetic education system, embracing a humble attitude toward nature, life, and childhood, while maintaining curiosity and a spirit of exploration, providing high-quality parent-child time for every visitor. The design style has a rugged, wild beauty — wooden fences, a stage, huts, and other structures retain the original texture and form of the timber, tastefully scattered across the open lawn.

The camp's service features an integration of rural homestays, farmhouse restaurants, country cafés, camping bases, and nature education, meeting diverse customer needs with attentive, thoughtful, and personalized customized services. Experiential activities include botanical tie-dyeing, nature science education, and natural food education. Specialty foods include Knight Coffee, rustic farm vegetables, sliced grilled meat, innovative Western cuisine, and aesthetic buffet meals. The environment features indoor dining rooms, a café, chess and card rooms, etc. Local folk culture includes handmade foods, valley bonfires, and "Wild Planet" cultural and creative products. Arts and cultural events include the Harvest Earth Art Festival and the Valley Art Festival. Average spending is 100 yuan per person. Accommodation is 499 yuan per tent, with three luxury tent rooms available.

Leisure features: Parent-child education, rural homestays, eco-restaurant, and camping experience


Lotus Blossom Homestay is located in Tongmu Village, Lianhua Town, Yuelu District, Changsha City. Surrounded by rolling hills and lush mountains, the area boasts clear waters and pleasant scenery. The homestay covers a relatively large area, and each room is named after a different term for lotus, adding a touch of cultural richness.

In 2021, Mango TV's "Detective Academy Season 5" filmed here. In 2022, a second-phase project was added — a party-style homestay. Hall 1 and Hall 2 can accommodate up to 300 people, offering lodging, specialty dining, outdoor barbecues, team-building activities, and lawn wedding parties. Nearby attractions include agri-tourism sites, ecological orchards, horse farms, and outdoor fishing spots. The design style features simple natural wood tones paired with plain white walls, surrounded by ponds and greenery, blending humanistic and natural elements for a unique aesthetic. The service is attentive, with each room equipped with an intelligent butler called "Little Lotus."

Experiential activities include fruit picking and handicraft making. Specialty cuisine features rustic farm dishes. The surrounding environment includes agri-tourism sites, ecological orchards, and horse farms. There are ample parent-child activity spaces, including a clear small river for fishing. With high vegetation coverage and fresh air, it serves as a natural oxygen bar for Changsha residents on weekend getaways. Average spending is 80 yuan per person. Accommodation prices range from 498 to 698 yuan depending on the room type. The homestay has a total of 7 rooms, including 4 queen-bed rooms and 3 twin-bed rooms. The interior combines modern and natural wood styles with lotus-inspired details throughout.

Leisure features: Boutique homestay, leisure stay, fruit-picking experiences, and family-friendly fun


Lianyu Homestay leverages the resource advantages of the beautiful rural construction of Tongmu Village, striving to create a tourist destination centered on the theme of ecological leisure, ideal for Changsha residents to relax and vacation.

The homestay is primarily driven by its dining services, integrating accommodation, rural sightseeing, ecological leisure, and other diversified functions to attract surrounding tourists and outdoor groups. Relying on the agricultural cultural landscape and ecological scenery, Lianyu Homestay adopts modern management concepts, combining agricultural tourism and leisure with recreational activities to offer visitors a dual delight of nature and mountain wilderness.

Its architectural style features traditional residential houses and wooden covered bridges, forming a homestay with courtyard characteristics. In terms of service, it provides attentive and thoughtful care, along with personalized custom services based on customer needs. Experiential activities include writing couplets, nature science education, making zongzi (rice dumplings), and flower arrangement. Specialty foods include rustic farm dishes, homemade sausages, and pickled vegetables. An environmental highlight is that guests must walk through a forest to reach the homestay, following a winding path, passing by covered bridges, earthen houses, and ponds, creating a sense of sudden openness and delight. Average spending is 80 yuan per person. Accommodation prices range from 288 to 658 yuan depending on the room type. The homestay has 6 rooms, offering a total of 10 beds.

Leisure features: Eco-friendly lodging, science education, hands-on experiences, and specialty cuisine


Boutique Site 1: Aikou Tea Town

Aikou Village is a major tea-producing area in Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. The environment here is tranquil, filled with the fragrance of tea, and the tea garden scenery is beautiful. By developing tea-themed study bases, distinctive homestays, and integrated tea tourism businesses, Aikou Tea Town has been listed as one of China's first ten boutique routes integrating tea culture and tourism.

Visitors can enjoy the beautiful tea garden landscapes, participate in agricultural activities such as tea picking and processing, as well as engage in leisure activities like hiking, cycling, and fishing. To enhance rural tourism facilities, Aikou Village has built the Sima Tea Lodge, a boutique homestay featuring tea culture. The homestay incorporates the cultural backgrounds of the Tujia, Miao, and Han people into its architecture and interior decoration, extensively using handmade old Miao embroidery and silver ornaments. The elegant names of tea are used to name the guest rooms and tea rooms, making the lodge a showcase of ethnic culture and tea culture.

Leisure features: Tea garden scenery, tea culture experience, and leisure homestay


The Xiangxi Golden Tea Expo Garden is located in Langmu Village, Majing'ao Town, Jishou City. It is a comprehensive expo garden integrating tea technology research and development, cultural heritage preservation, and tourism and leisure. By fully utilizing the natural, cultural, and ecological advantages of Langmu Village, the expo garden focuses on building the Xiangxi Golden Tea Exhibition Hall, a demonstration base for high-quality Xiangxi golden tea cultivation, and a processing workshop, creating a modern Xiangxi golden tea complex that integrates planting, processing, sightseeing, tasting, trading, and cultural tourism. As an important tea industry base in the Xiangxi, the Xiangxi Golden Tea Expo Garden has driven the development of the tea industry in Jishou City and serves as a significant window showcasing Xiangxi tea culture.

Leisure features: Tea culture education and Xiangxi cuisine


Hangtuo Village is located in Jilve Township, Jishou City, about 18 kilometers from the city proper. It is rich in tea production, with 2,000 mu (about 133 hectares) of tea gardens scattered across the mountains. Pingnian Village is dominated by forested mountains, with undulating peaks, overlapping ridges, and interlacing rivers and streams. The streams abound with fish and shrimp, enjoying spring-like weather all year round, offering abundant resources and beautiful scenery. Both villages are exclusively Miao ethnic communities. Starting from the X077 "Rainbow Highway," winding along the mountain road up to the Hangtuoshang Village, visitors can see the Xiangxi golden tea gardens and crystal-clear river shoals. The scenery resembles a ribbon winding around emerald mountains, connecting pastoral landscapes, distinctive ethnic villages, and the tea industry into a stunning panorama. The villages have been recognized as one of China's Ethnic Minority Characteristic Villages and are included in the list of traditional Chinese villages.

Leisure features: Folk custom experiences, spring tea picking, and farming culture

Address: Hangtuo Village, Jilve Township, and Pingnian Village, Aizhai Town, Jishou City, Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hunan Province

Chinese source: Hunan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism