During the cultural tour to Tianfu ancient towns, held on September 26, the Tianfu ancient towns tourism federation was formally founded. It included eight ancient towns -- Pingle, Anren, Huanglongxi, Xilai, Luodai, Jiezi, Wufeng and?Sandaoyan. Meanwhile, the visual identity (VI) system of Tianfu ancient towns also made its debut on the promotion activity.

The promotion campaign attracted more than 100 ancient town representatives from home and abroad, experts from the Tourism Studies Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as well as tourism representatives. The attending representatives and relevant experts gave advice and suggestions on the scientific protection, reasonable development and sustained utilization of ancient towns. After the meeting, representatives also made spot investigations of the ancient towns of Pingle, Anren and Jiezi.

Currently there are 24 ancient towns in Chengdu. Their aim is simple: perpetuate historical and cultural heritage, maintain historical overview, protect the ecological system and present pastoral charm, embody spirits to Chengdu ancient towns with the brand of Tianfu ancient towns, promote ancient town construction, and coordinate urban and rural development. Chengdu recently invested hundreds of millions of yuan to protect and develop these ancient towns, to procure the historical and cultural ancient towns' infrastructures, urban and rural form, industrial arrangement, city function, public service within the area of Chengdu, to realize the coexistence and an all-win development of ecology, to improve people's livelihood, resources and the economy. In 2010, the ancient towns in the whole city received 13 million tourists and realized tourism revenue of 1.2 billion yuan.

The establishment of the ancient towns federation aims to further explore the cultural content, to uniformly market different tourism ancient towns with the brand of Tianfu ancient towns, to set a uniform tourism image of Tianfu ancient towns, to promote the comprehensive reception capacity and service level, to advertise the brand of Tianfu ancient towns both at home and abroad and, to expand the service target to the global tourists.

When expressing strong belief in the future of Tianfu ancient towns, Wang Jianmin, researcher in tourism studies center of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, suggested that "the most important thing for the ancient towns is to keep its own characteristics."