The National Tourism Administration has approved the Ancient City of Pingyao in North China’s Shanxi province as a 5A-level scenic spot, the highest level for Chinese attractions, in an announcement on July 20.

The Ancient City of Pingyao [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

To date, the province has six 5A scenic spots in addition to the ancient city. The other five are Mount Wutai, Yungang Grottoes, Mount Mianshan, Huangcheng Premiser’s Mansion and the Qiao Family Compound.

According to Shanxi Daily, the Ancient City of Pingyao has successfully passed the landscape quality evaluation by the top tourism authorities in 2013, as well as other assessments in following years. With high costs of ancient-town preservation, construction and tourism development, the city?has got?state loans of 389 million yuan ($62.63 million) in total.

Mount Wutai [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Besides the Ancient City of Pingyao, 14 other scenic spots were granted the title, including Benxi Water Cave in Liaoning province, Nanxun Town in Zhejiang province and Three Lanes and Seven Alleys in Fujian province. China now has 201 5A-level tourist attractions in total, according to the data from people.com.cn, which reported that China had 186 5A-level attractions until 2014.

Qiao Family Compound [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The 15 newly upgraded attractions are the first group that assessed in accordance with new measures published by the China National Tourism Administration this year. The national work conference on tourism planning and development, which concluded in April, declared that 5A-level tourist attraction will no longer be permanent, but can be cancelled anytime if the scenic spot fails to meet standards. Moreover, in order to guarantee a reasonable ticket price, scenic spots are encouraged to compete to be the best scenic spot for the trustworthy price.

Yungang Grottoes [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The evaluation for 5A-level tourist attractions is not determined solely by the tourism administration. A committee for quality evaluation of national tourism resource planning and development of experts from related different fields will be responsible for 5A-level tourist attraction and tourism related titles.

Mianshan Mountain [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]