Tourism of the Stone Forest Geopark can be traced back to the year of 1614 when Zhiyun Cave, one of China’s earliest tourist caves, was explored. But as an industry, tourism for the Stone Forest started from 1930s and has become one of the local pillar industries since 1980s. After experienced a steady increase in tourists, the current annual visitors of the park is 1.2-1.5 million. It culminated in 1999, because of the world horticulture exposition held in Kunming, with tow million visitors, including 130 thousand oversea visitors.

In history, agriculture was the traditional dominant industry of Shilin area. People’s income mainly came from crop planting. Farmers accounted for 91.3％ of the total population of the county. Since 1980s, successful tourism development has brought about great changes to the local industry structure and people’s income structure. The proportions of three industries (first, second and tertiary) have changed respectively from 72.47％, 9.2％, 19.33％ in the early 1980s to 32.6％, 32％, 35.4％ in 2001. Tourism has become one of the local pillar industries.

The Geopark, as one of Yunnan’s main tourist attractions, contributed a great deal to Kunming’s reputation as an international tourist city. Visitors to the Stone Forest Geopark accounted for 26.1％ overseas and 12.9％ domestic totals to Kunming, and 5％ of the total to Yunnan province. Stone Forest has become an important site for sightseeing, entertainment, go vacation, scientific study and education.

Visitors to the Stone Forest Geopark

The Major Stone Forest, the most visited area of the Geopark