The success of Hetou Old Street and Tangshan Feast did not happen in a vacuum. They are the products of a deliberate, province-wide strategy to turn Hebei into a weekend destination for the 110 million people living in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
For years, Hebei was overlooked by tourists despite being home to several UNESCO World Heritage sites and containing all seven major landform types, notes Wang Rongli, deputy director of the Hebei provincial department of culture and tourism.
That began to change in 2022, when Hebei launched a strategic push to become the "weekend leisure destination of choice" for residents of Beijing and Tianjin. The slogan,"So close, so beautiful — spend your weekend in Hebei", was elevated to a provincial development strategy.
But traffic comes and goes quickly. "For a brand to last, it must rely on products and services," Wang emphasizes.
Since 2023, Hebei has become one of the first provinces to offer free expressway for tour buses traveling on weekends and public holidays. By 2025, the policy had saved tour operators more than 510 million yuan ($75 million) and covered more than 3.4 million buses, local authorities report.
"The fee reduction isn't large for any single tourist, but it sends a signal that Hebei genuinely welcomes you, and we're even willing to save you the tolls," she explains.
The province has also launched a luggage delivery service called "Easy Hebei Tour", allowing visitors to check in their bags at Beijing West Railway Station and find them already waiting at their Hebei hotel.
"The most durable, most powerful, and most cost-effective marketing is always word-of-mouth," Wang says.
Midway through Hetou Old Street, the night erupts. Along a stretch of the canal transformed into a battlefield, six former fishing boats have been refashioned into Tang Dynasty warships. On and around them, more than 500 performers charge on horseback, spin towering flags, and hurl themselves into staged combat.
From both ends of the canal, actors suspended from cables glide across the night on mechanical phoenixes, their robes streaming behind them as they pass through cascades of molten iron. The iron, heated to 1,600 C, is flung by hand against a brick wall, a thousand-year-old folk tradition called da tie hua. It explodes into a blizzard of white-orange sparks that rain down over the water, the boats and the upturned faces of the crowd.
For Shi Jia, the boat guide, the performance captures something essential about Hetou Old Street.
"For 12 years, this place was nothing. Now people come from Shanghai and Guangzhou, Guangdong province, just to see this," she says.
The low bridges are still there. So is her warning: "Please lower your head." But when the phoenixes fly, no one is looking down.
