Moon Hill Village -- Two years ago, Gui Feng Xu looked up from the rice paddies she had hunched over for most of her life and gazed at the throngs of tourists ambling through her rural village.

Each year, she noticed that more visitors would come to see the area's scenic valley of karst cliffs that rise like dragon's teeth from the rice paddies. So Gui and about half of the village's 400 residents gave up farming for tourism. Now the 22-year-old goes by the name Lucy at her jobs as a local tour guide and receptionist at a nearby hotel.

"I want to improve my English," she said. "I want to own my own business. I am tired of working in the fields."

In many villages across China, tourist dollars are luring villagers like Gui away from subsistence farming and poverty. Some families have earned enough from tourism to send their children to college and purchase luxury items, and they readily agree that the booming trade has made a profound change in rural life.

Tourism, foreign and domestic, is exploding across the world's most populous country. Since China opened its doors in the early 1980s, the nation has become the sixth biggest vacation destination in the world.

Last year, China attracted 31 million overseas visitors, including 890,000 Americans, accounting for $56 billion and 5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP), according to the China National Tourism Board.

The Board estimates that the number of annual overseas visitors will reach 135 million by 2020, generating $397 billion or 8 percent of GDP and making China the most visited country on the planet.

Armed for the first time with disposable income, China's emerging middle class is hitting the road in unprecedented numbers. The tourism board says there were 744 million Chinese tourists in 2000, the world's highest total of domestic tourists.

"The tourism industry is expected to become the state's new economic pillar, " Wei Xiaoan, director of the Planning and Finance Department of the National Tourism Administration, recently told the China Daily newspaper.

Obviously, many visitors want to see picturesque rural villages such as Moon Hill, a quintessential photo-op with verdant rice paddies and endless lush stone peaks that flank the Li River and resemble a Chinese silk painting.

Many Chinese claim that Moon Hill, which draws tens of thousands of tourists each year, is the most beautiful spot on Earth.

The area's major attraction is a limestone arch called Moon Hill that is famous for its moon-shaped hole and the Buddha Water Caves, where tourists can slosh through muddy pools of water.

At their service are scores of villagers who work as tour guides, guest house hosts or aggressive hawkers, pestering tourists to take their picture with water buffaloes or buy bottled water and postcards.

It's no wonder they are aggressive. The average annual rural salary is 900 yuan ($109), the price of a one-way plane ticket from Beijing to Shanghai. The standard price for a photo next to a water buffalo is 2 yuan or 24 cents, enough to purchase a kilo of rice.

Former farmer Shuibao Cheng said he barely earned enough money to feed his family of four after toiling all day in the fields and selling vegetables on the side. Since he became manager of the Buddha Water Caves, he has put his son through college and bought a television and a VCR. He hopes an improved marketing campaign for the caves will bring more tourists and boost his salary even more.

"I want a BMW," he said, a beeper and cellular phone hanging from his belt.

But Cheng is well aware that tourism has drastically changed his old life. The constant glow of television beaming from house to house has replaced traditional activities, including visits to neighboring villages to attend dances and ceremonies.

And as the potential for earning money increases, time spent with family has decreased. Some villagers, who work as guides or hawkers in between stints in the water-filled rice paddies, say they work twice as much as they did before. Time that was once spent with family and friends is now spent by the side of the road, competing with neighbors to sell goods to the tourists.

Some shadow the foreigners for the entire 40-minute hike up the 622-stone staircase to the top of Moon Hill trying to persuade them to buy water while others chase bicyclists while waving postcards.

But Cheng says tourism is well worth the price, having already paid for roads, electricity and a new television tower. He hopes that Moon Hill will one day resemble nearby Yangshuo.

Yangshuo, a 20-minute drive away, is a Westernized city of 285,000 inhabitants that caters to English-speaking tourists. In Yangshuo, visitors can eat pizza and burritos at restaurants with names like Planet Yangshuo and Hard Rock Cafe.

Last year, some 200,000 tourists visited the city on the Li River, double the amount of five years ago, according to Zhaogui Huang, the city's director of tourism.

However, if Moon Hill becomes a smaller version of Yangshuo, many of the younger residents such as Gui Feng Xu may not be around to see the change. She is considering going to business school in Shanghai.

"Tourism has been great for our village," she said while helping her father prepare lunch for several tourists in the family kitchen. "It has brought us great change."