The city of Lishui's gross domestic product notched up a 19.8 percent year-on-year gain in the first quarter of the current year to reach 38.48 billion yuan ($5.98 billion), the city's statistics bureau announced.

That represented an impressive recovery for the city – located in East China's Zhejiang province – after its GDP shrank in the first quarter of 2020 due to the outbreak of COVID-19, local media outlets reported on May 9.

In Q1, Lishui saw the arrival of 138 new commercial projects, worth a total of 16.19 billion yuan.

Out of the city's 35 industry sectors, 33 industries showed positive year-on-year growth in added value. Out of these, the digital economy core industrial manufacturing, precision manufacturing, fashion and health and medicine sectors grew by 37.2 percent, 54.2 percent, 32 percent and 19.3 percent, respectively.

With industrial production hitting a new high, all regions achieved substantial growth in Lishui in Q1. The growth rate of industrial added value in the Yunhe, Jinyun and Suichang counties ranked as the top three in the city during the period.

In terms of industries, sales in the catering, retail and wholesale industries recovered rapidly, increasing by 91.2 percent, 55 percent and 69 percent respectively.

In the first three months of 2021, the total number of tourists coming to the city totaled 4.94 million, up 135.8 percent year-on-year. Total tourism revenue was 4.9 billion yuan, up 134.6 percent. With such a performance, the tourism industry has broadly recovered to the level of the same period in 2019.