A project to promote both tourism and the rural economy was launched recently in Xixian New Area, a national-level developing area in Shaanxi province.

The project, designed by the provincial government, will be built in the area's northern area, where nine imperial tombs from the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24) and the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) are located together with a large number of precious historical relics, said Jiang Zelin, deputy governor of the province and director of the area's administrative committee.

"We designed the project aiming to make full use of the value of the Han and Tang imperial tombs, to explore deeply the Han and Tang culture and to promote the coordinated development of heritage conservation and the tourism industry," the deputy governor said.

Using the concept of the tombs promoting the village economy while the village protects the tombs, the project will combine heritage protection and rural economic development with industrial restructuring and new village construction, in order to foster and support a number of cultural and leisure tourism villages and towns and promote sustainable regional economic development.

The province has designed 30 such projects, including this, in its northern and southern parts to further speed up cultural and tourism development, in order to make the province an important tourism destination along the ancient Silk Road, a trade channel built more than 2,000 years ago with Xi'an, the capital of the province, as its starting point, and linking Central Asia and Europe.