First Parent-child Carnival Centred on Local Potatoes Debuts in Wenling, Zhejiang, Boosting Integrated Agriculture, Culture and Tourism

According to local municipal cultural and tourism official sources, the inaugural "Wow! Little Potatoes" Parent-child Carnival gets underway smoothly at Wangshun Brown Sugar Expo Park in Wugen Town, Wenling City, Zhejiang Province on 6 June amid early summer pastoral scenery. Nearly one hundred family groups step into farmland to take part in immersive farming activities, enjoy recreational games and browse a rural market, gaining direct access to pastoral charm and the joy of manual labour. The event fully showcases integrated development of agriculture, cultural tourism and the vital role female entrepreneurs play in advancing shared prosperity in rural areas.

A potato-digging contest for families emerges as one of the most well-received highlights onsite. Equipped with small shovels, children work alongside their parents to identify potato vines, loosen soil and dig out plump golden local potatoes. A series of themed leisure activities follow in succession, including potato bowling, ring toss and challenge races, enabling young participants to pick up agricultural knowledge in an entertaining setting. The on-site speciality market named "Mothers’ Homemade Flavours" draws constant crowds. Street food such as spiced salt potatoes and pork rice with potatoes, alongside traditional brown sugar products, fill the air with tempting aromas. Local specialties including Wugen laver, waxberries and watermelons are put on full display, attracting more than 400 visitors to make purchases. The event lifts visitor footfall in rural tourist sites and drives robust sales of local agricultural goods.

This vibrant rural gathering is backed by a complete industrial chain built around local potatoes designed to deliver shared prosperity. Wugen small potatoes are the only crop variety in Zhejiang Province featured in the national top ten exemplary development cases of outstanding crop germplasm resources. Thanks to their soft, delicate texture, the once ordinary rural crop has evolved into a lucrative commodity lifting local incomes. Guided by joint Party building mechanisms, local authorities have set up a dedicated industrial chain covering seedling breeding, standardised cultivation, intensive processing and marketing promotion. Drawing on virus-free tissue culture technology from Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, a smart seed breeding demonstration base with a total investment of 60 million yuan has been built locally, greatly raising both potato yield and product quality. The town now has potato plantations stretching across nearly 6,000 mu, generating an annual output value exceeding 90 million yuan and increasing incomes for over 2,600 farming households, cementing the crop’s position as a core pillar industry for rural revitalisation.

Female new farmers stand out amid the flourishing industrial landscape and become a key driving force behind local shared prosperity. One returned entrepreneur has launched a local agricultural brand focused on potato industrial upgrading. Cooperating with research teams to tackle technical bottlenecks in preservation and deep processing, the brand has secured supply deals for Wugen potatoes with high-end catering establishments. Adopting an operation model linking enterprises, cooperatives and individual farmers, the brand delivers steady income growth to more than a thousand households. New dining options featuring potato-themed feasts and rural tourism projects are also rolled out to keep revitalising the local rural economy.

The person in charge of a women-led shared prosperity workshop centred on brown sugar preserves century-old traditional craftsmanship while developing innovative derivative products. The operator has embraced the digital economy and live-stream e-commerce, assembling a team of local female live streamers to promote intangible cultural heritage items and local farm goods online, racking up sales totalling several million yuan. The brown sugar expo park has been transformed into an educational tourism base that hosts tens of thousands of visitors each year. It creates stable local jobs for rural women on a regular basis and opens up more income avenues for grassroots females, breathing new vitality into traditional craftsmanship for shared prosperity.

These entrepreneurial efforts led by female pioneers serve as a representative example of Wenling City’s support for women’s development and rural shared prosperity. Local women’s federations leverage their institutional strengths to advance women-focused industrial chains for shared prosperity. Skill training programmes, themed competitions and workshop support mechanisms work together to unlock the entrepreneurial potential of rural women. A live-streaming contest for local farm produce cultivates batches of female live streamers and helps local agricultural products gain nationwide exposure via online channels. Various women-led shared prosperity workshops offer industrial orders and employment opportunities, building reliable platforms for rural women to launch flexible businesses. A growing number of rural women join live-stream sales, handmade cultural creation and rural study tour services, forming a coordinated system for joint development and shared gains across rural areas.

Targeted women empowerment initiatives will keep moving forward to unlock internal growth momentum in rural regions. Female entrepreneurs and practitioners will continue to thrive in countryside development, delivering steady momentum for the construction of pleasant villages and the advancement of common prosperity.