China’s high-speed railways are helping more remote and poor areas to strike it rich by offering opportunities for area resources to go into the national market, the Xinhua-run Economic Information Daily reported on Feb. 5.

Wufu Mountain, located in Shangrao County, east China’s Jiangxi Province, boasts honey and beautiful natural scenery. However, due to poor transportation, the region has been experiencing slow economic development.

Thanks to the Hefei-Fujian high-speed railway which started to run from June 2015, people of the region are gradually becoming rich.

He Jinwen, owner of an agritourism business, noted that more and more tourists are taking the high-speed trains to the region, bringing him an income of 200,000 yuan ($31,749) a year.

The Jiujiang-Jingdezhen-Quzhou railway line, which opened in late 2017 in Jiangxi Province, connects many famous mountains, lakes, cities, and villages.

Li Yang, a ceramic enthusiast, said that it used to take about 10 hours for him to get to Jingdezhen, known as the “Porcelain Capital of the World.” Now it only takes two and a half hours.

Owing to convenience of the high-speed rail, Wuyuan County has received 21 million tourists in 2017, up 20 percent on year-on-year basis.

In addition, the Lanzhou-Xinjiang high-speed railway not only boosts the economy of cities along the rail, but also helps poverty-stricken areas in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region become rich. More and more agricultural products and fruits from the remote areas are being sold across the nation through the railway.

The opening of the railway also injected new vigor into tourism of the region.

Statistics show that Xinjiang accepted 107 million tourists last year, a year-on-year increase of 32.4 percent, creating a tourist income of 182.2 billion yuan.