Aerial photo taken on March 24, 2021 shows farmers picking tea leaves during the tea harvest season at a tea garden in Huangshan City, east China's Anhui Province. Photo: Xinhua

World-famous Chinese tourism city Huangshan in East China's Anhui Province is announcing to offer tea-picking jobs for the city's tour guides who have no jobs currently, as the pandemic-hit industry still sees no signs of recovery amid the latest virus resurgence across the country.

At present, it is difficult for the tourism industry to operate normally, and tour guides cannot work their jobs as before. Some tour guides are facing difficulties in life and need to find a temporary job to tide over the current difficulties, according to a job hunt notice from Huangshan Tour Guide Association on Thursday.

With the help of local authorities, the association said it will now provide tea-picking jobs for tour guides, with a salary of 170 yuan ($26.73) per day, food and accommodation; reimbursement of round-trip transportation fees will also be covered. 

Huangshan is a large tea-planting area; as Spring comes, it's now time for tea-picking. The working period will be from April 10 to April 30, according to the notice. 

Famous for its Huangshan Mountain, also known as the Yellow Mountain, the city received 63.17 million visits and recorded an annual tourism income of 53.8 billion yuan in 2021, about 81 percent of that in 2019, according to local governments. 

Prior to the pandemic outbreak, in 2019, about 74 million visitors visited Huangshan - about seven times the number of visitors to Hawaii in the US the same year - while visitors from outside the Chinese mainland numbered 2.87 million.

Global Times