Chongming to host forest festival

A three-day forest tourism festival will be launched in Shanghai on September 25, featuring cycling, camping, a float parade and folk culture.

A cycling tour around Chongming Island, a holiday destination boasting 28 percent of forest coverage, will be organized during the festival to raise the awareness on green transportation.

A forest camping event and food festival in Chongming are also part of the festival, allowing people to experience the charms of forest tourism.

The opening ceremony of the 2017 China Forest Tourism Festival will be held at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center, where dances from different ethnic minority groups, including Uygur, Miao, Yi and Dong, and Shaolin Kungfu performances.

China's 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities will display their forest tourism landscape at the center — with forest trails, mass flowers, hot springs and forest towns featured. Facilities related with forest tourism such as wood houses, camps and recreational vehicles will also be on display.

Free tickets to forest tourism destinations such as the Dabieshan, Sanqing and Longhu mountains will be distributed at the festival.

A forest tourism float will debut at the opening ceremony of Shanghai Tourism Festival, the city’s biggest tourism extravaganza, on September 9.

There are more than 9,000 forest tourism destinations in China represented by forest parks and wetland parks.

Forest tourism has emerged as a booming tourism industry across the country with an average increase of over 15 percent of tourists every year. In the first half of this year, these destinations received nearly 700 million tourists, up 16.7 percent from the same period last year.

The forest coverage in Shanghai has increased to 15.56 percent last year from 3.17 percent in 1999.

The city will boast 30 suburban parks by 2040, and four of them, namely Langxia, Qingxi, Changxing and Pujiang have opened to the public.