Xuzhou’s New Consumer Scenes Draw Repeat Visitors

Xuzhou, a historic transportation hub in northern Jiangsu Province, has quietly transformed into a tourism destination where visitors increasingly return for more. Travel platform data shows that repeat visitors now account for 23.7 percent of all tourists to the city, with the rate surging to 42.8 percent among visitors from the neighboring provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, and Henan, according to Guangming Daily.

From Transit Hub to Destination

Located at the crossroads of four provinces with a catchment population of nearly 120 million, Xuzhou was long known primarily as a railway junction and industrial city. But over the past five years, it has undergone a remarkable economic pivot. Tourist numbers grew from 27.55 million in 2020 to 94 million in 2025, with tourism spending reaching 98.8 billion yuan, as Phoenix News Jiangsu reported.

The city’s strategy centers on leveraging its deep cultural heritage—including its association with Pengzu, the legendary founding father of Chinese cuisine—to build immersive consumer experiences that encourage longer stays and repeat visits.

The Fuyang Festival: A Thousand-Year Tradition Meets Modern Commerce

At the heart of Xuzhou’s summer tourism push is the Pengzu Fuyang Festival, now in its 23rd year. The festival, which opened on July 17 at Hubei Road Stadium, celebrates the traditional custom of eating mutton during the hottest days of summer—a practice rooted in traditional Chinese medicine principles of “treating winter diseases in summer” and maintained for over a thousand years.

The scale is staggering. Xuzhou is home to 4,300 mutton restaurants and 4,500 BBQ establishments, and on the festival’s opening day alone, over 300,000 sheep are consumed citywide, according to CNR. More than 100 million people across Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, and Henan maintain the tradition of eating mutton during the hottest summer days, and the festival attracts over 20 million participants annually.

“‘A bowl of mutton soup during the hottest days means no need for a doctor’s prescription.’ The national intangible heritage of eating mutton during the hottest summer days is a folk custom Xuzhou has maintained for a thousand years,” said Shen Xianbing, Vice President of the Xuzhou Cooking Association. “Over the years, we have used the Fuyang Festival as a driving force to build a culinary cultural brand, attracting over 20 million participants annually.”

The festival drives a full industry chain spanning farming, cold chain logistics, dining, cultural tourism, and night markets, supporting 300,000 jobs. In 2009, Xuzhou was designated “China’s Hometown of Fuyang Cuisine,” and in 2021, the Fuyang eating custom was listed as national-level intangible cultural heritage, as Modern Express detailed.

From “One Meal” to “Two Nights”

Beyond the festival itself, Xuzhou has launched a comprehensive summer tourism campaign under the banner “Come to Xuzhou, Taste the Summer,” featuring six food consumption scenes, five food tourism routes, and more than 130 activities across eight sectors. The goal is to shift visitors from quick day trips to multi-day stays.

The strategy appears to be working. The Xinyi “Huating River Music Festival” attracted 60,000 music fans in June, driving nearly 60 million yuan in dining and accommodation spending, with local specialty dining and night market businesses growing revenue by more than 70 percent, as reported by Guangming Daily.

In the first half of 2026, Xuzhou hosted nine large-scale performances with more than 10,000 attendees each, totaling approximately 257,000 spectators. The “Pengcheng Fenghua” lake-island show, which premiered in 2023, has delivered over 1,000 performances and attracted more than 400,000 visitors. In 2026 alone, it drew about 50,000 viewers, generating over 8 million yuan in ticket revenue and more than 10 million yuan in total revenue, according to the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee.

“Performing arts are both a carrier of cultural heritage and an engine for tourism development,” a Xuzhou Culture and Tourism Bureau official said.

Bringing Heritage to the “Front Stage”

Xuzhou’s approach extends beyond food and entertainment to the broader cultural landscape. The city has over 300 intangible cultural heritage projects at various levels, and officials are working to bring them from obscurity to the center of consumer life.

“Xuzhou is fertile ground for cultural heritage, with over 300 intangible cultural heritage projects at various levels. But in the past, a significant portion was hidden away,” said Zhu Hong, Director of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Division at the Xuzhou Culture and Tourism Bureau. “Now, through this event, we are bringing intangible heritage to the ‘front stage’ of consumption, using folk art to activate the regional cultural tourism market.”

The Pengcheng Qili historical district, a 3.5-kilometer cultural axis running through Xuzhou’s old city, exemplifies this vision. The district integrates intangible heritage exhibitions, cultural creative activation, and digital immersive experiences, attracting nearly 400,000 visitors during the May Day holiday alone. During the Spring Festival, it received over 600,000 visitors with more than 12 million online exposures, as the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee reported.

From “Selling Goods” to “Creating Experiences”

Xuzhou’s commercial sector is also evolving. The Shanshan Outlets, which has moved beyond its traditional discount positioning, saw first-half traffic rise 20 percent and sales increase 35 percent, with 45 percent of consumers coming from outside the city. The outlet introduced a batch of regional first stores and hosts special events like “Eating Tower/Eating Tart” contests and traditional Chinese medicine markets popular with young people, according to Guangming Daily.

This transformation reflects a broader strategic shift. In February 2026, Xuzhou established the Municipal Cultural, Commercial, Sports and Tourism Integration Working Group, breaking down departmental barriers to coordinate resources across sectors. The initiative aligns with the national 2026 work report calling for “enriching integrated cultural-tourism-sports-commerce formats” and the national “Action Plan to Boost Consumption,” as the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee noted.

“Consumer demand is currently upgrading from ‘functional satisfaction’ to ‘value realization,’ with greater emphasis on emotional value and consumption experience,” said Sha Bo, Deputy Head of the Xuzhou Cultural, Commercial, Sports and Tourism Integration Working Group. “Xuzhou is using comprehensive cultural-commercial-sports-tourism integration as its approach, reconstructing immersive and distinctive consumption scenes based on regional culture, pushing commercial districts and historical blocks to move beyond single-sales models and upgrade into comprehensive urban ‘experience spaces.’”

A Model for Second-Tier Cities

Xuzhou’s experience offers lessons for other Chinese cities seeking to leverage cultural heritage and food tourism for economic growth. The city has demonstrated that traditional customs can become modern economic drivers, and that breaking down bureaucratic silos can unlock the “multiplier effect” of integrated cultural-commercial-sports-tourism development.

The Yunlong Lake scenic area, which averages about 38,000 daily visitors in summer with weekend peaks exceeding 52,000, exemplifies the draw of Xuzhou’s experience-based attractions, as highlighted by Phoenix News Jiangsu.

As Xuzhou continues to refine its consumer scenes and deepen its cultural-commercial integration, the key question will be whether it can sustain the momentum of repeat visitor growth. With the Fuyang Festival running through late July and a packed calendar of cultural events ahead, the city is betting that its blend of ancient tradition and modern experience will keep visitors coming back—again and again.