A small town in Jilin Province is drawing its young people back home as a century-old gold mine transforms into a bustling cultural tourism destination.
The gold museum in Jiapigou Town, Huadian City, Jilin Province, remained busy even after the National Day holiday. Wu Xinzhi, a young woman from the town, put on her work uniform and began her first shift as a museum guide. For Wu Xinzhi, this job was never part of her life plan. Her father worked at the local gold mine for more than 20 years, and after graduating she stayed in another city. When she learned the gold museum was recruiting guides, she decided to return home and became one of the first guides to come back. "The mine stories and revolutionary history of our parents' generation deserve to be seen by more people," she said, adding that many of her childhood friends have also returned one after another to work in the local cultural tourism service industry.
The town has a permanent population of just over 10,000, yet during this National Day holiday the gold museum received more than 40,000 visitor trips, with long lines of tourists and vehicles. Exhibits such as gold bars and a large golden ox, along with the underground gold panning experience, became popular attractions. Visitors view exhibits at the gold museum. Photo by Shi Hongyu.
Shen Tuo, a tourist from Shanghai, made a point of experiencing the underground mine cart ride. "I never expected such a complete gold museum to be hidden in a small town in Northeast China. The underground mine cart and gold panning experiences are very special," he said, adding that the trip was more vivid than he had anticipated.
Jiapigou Town lies deep in the Changbai Mountains and has a 206-year history of large-scale gold mining, earning it the title of "China's Number One Gold Mine." In 1820, gold prospectors traveled upstream along the Weisha River to this place, beginning the local gold mining history. In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, a man known as "Han Bianwai," Han Xianzong, organized gold mining here, and at its peak the number of gold miners reached forty to fifty thousand. Around the world, from California in the United States to the Yukon in Canada, gold rush towns mostly turned to heritage tourism after mining ended. What makes Jiapigou distinctive is that "the vein has not been cut off" — mining has continued without interruption. Abandoned mine shafts have now become underground tour routes, while extraction from underground veins continues.
As a resource-based town, Jiapigou also saw its vitality decline due to the depletion of shallow veins and the contraction of traditional mining, with young adults flowing out and shops falling into decline. The turning point came at the end of 2024, when China National Gold Group reached a cooperation agreement with the Jilin Provincial Government. Construction began in 2025, and after more than a year, a gold museum with a floor area of 13,000 square meters was completed. According to China National Gold Group, this is currently China's only museum with both gold industry and revolutionary history as its dual themes. Visitors view the museum's prized "treasure of the museum," the large golden ox. Photo by Liu Yi.
The exhibition hall adopts a layout of "above-ground exhibitions plus underground immersive experiences." Visitors can ride mine carts deep underground to experience a "gold panning journey." The hall also presents the resistance history of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army around Jiapigou in the 1930s and 1940s, telling the stories of anti-Japanese fighters such as Yang Jingyu and Wei Zhengmin.
After the museum opened, changes also appeared on the town's streets. Walking through Jiapigou, the commercial street has regained its prosperity, with many shops putting up brand-new signs and lighting up colorful lanterns at night to welcome customers. Wu Chenyi, 35, previously ran a business elsewhere. Optimistic about her hometown's prospects, she returned and opened a supermarket on the town's core road section. When the town was swept up in a construction boom, she served construction workers from all over the country; now, as the "gold-seeking" visitor flow steadily rises, her store's business has exceeded expectations. She told reporters that holiday traffic is especially noticeable, and in addition to daily necessities and beverages, she has added local specialty products to her shelves.
Huadian officials said the town uses the museum as its core to link 11 national industrial heritage sites, integrating abandoned factory buildings and mining relics into a "Gold Journey" route, while underground exploration, educational tours, cultural and creative products and other business formats are accelerating. With the help of the G334 tourism corridor connecting the Changbai Mountain scenic area cluster, Jiapigou has been incorporated into the core tourism layout of Changbai Mountain, and a composite tourism system of "industry + revolutionary history + ecology" is gradually taking shape. "The museum does more than preserve history; it gives new life to the cultural heritage of a century-old mine," said a relevant official of Jiapigou Town. This cultural landmark is revitalizing old mine resources, providing a new pillar for the town's transformation, and allowing the century-old gold heritage hidden deep in the Changbai Mountains to emerge from the mountains.