An autumn tourist festival was opened September 25 in Nanxun, an ancient town in east China's Zhejiang Province. Nearly 100 tourist groups were organized to attend the festival activities in the town.

Located in eastern Huzhou, a city famous for Chinese writing brushes, Nanxun is within a perimeter of around 200 km from big cities as Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Wuxi. It claims a provincial economy development zone and a state-level investment zone by overseas Chinese and the biggest construction material market in east China as well.

Nanxun is a town with a history of nearly 1,000 years in which it found its prime of fame in the Ming and Qing dynasties with its silk, rice, culture and gardens. In 1991 it was listed on the top of 15 provincial towns of cultural and historical heritage in Zhejiang Province. Now it boasts of over 30 sites of cultural relics under the protection of different levels, as well as seven scenic spots opened to tourists. Not long ago, six ancient towns including Nanxun had jointly applied to the United Nations for being listed as World Heritage sites and had been formally put into tentative list.

(People's Daily 09/28/2001)