"Nine British backpackers lived in my home for nine days only to see the canyon last year. Although I cannot speak English, I could see how much they loved the canyon."

Zhou has received about 6,000 visitors since April, whose payment to her for room and board, amounted to hundreds of thousands of yuan, has lifted the Zhou family - who previously lived on about 400 yuan ($64) a year from planting corn - out of abject poverty. Many farmers now work as tour guides, or run homestays to meet the increasing demands of the deluge of sightseers.

The number of tourists' cars has grown so fast that the small village witnessed its first ever traffic jam earlier this year. The county government built a parking lot at the mountain pass and now runs minibuses to carry travelers to and from the canyon.