In Depth: How Tourism Lifted One County out of Poverty — and Left It Vulnerable to Covid

It was June and normally peak season for Li Li, but her restaurant in a scenic part of Southwest China’s Guizhou province had only one table of customers on the balmy summer evening. She was not surprised. Empty tables had become a common sight in recent months.

Xijiang Qianhu Miao Village, a national 4A-level scenic area and hub for tourism focused on the Miao ethnic group, shut its gates to visitors in March as the country battled its worst Covid-19 outbreak in two years. It reopened over a month later, but with virus control measures that restricted people’s movement to the point where tourism and restaurants continued to suffer.