The second lottery draw for the maintenance fee of the old town of Lijiang was held at the conference center in ancient Lijiang on July 6.

The lottery, which is held twice a year (every Jan 6 and July 6 ), started in 2011 to better manage and protect the old town of Lijiang as well as to show gratitude for social support.

All the 1,760,527 bills paid for the Lijiang maintenance fee from Jan 1 to June 30, 2012 were included in the draw. The whole lottery process is run under the jurisdiction of a computer draw system with a total of ten winners. Each winner receives a bonus of 200 thousand yuan ($31.42 thousand). The winning lottery ticket numbers will be announced via the media such as the official website（http://www.ljgc.gov.cn), Yunnan Information Daily, Lijiang Daily and Lijiang TV.

It has been shown that the lottery is an effective way of encouraging visitors to come up with the maintenance fee, which has been shown to be an effective new model in China.

Since the first maintenance fee for the old town of Lijiang collected in 2001, as much as 1.7 billion yuan has been invested in protection projects in the town, while the maintenance fee has also been accumulating up to 1.3 billion yuan.

Editey by Zhao Qian and Brian Salter