Chinese tourists flocked to popular attractions across the country during this year’s Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays in the hottest Golden Week in five years, making many localities remind travelers to devise their itineraries to avoid peak times.
On Sunday, the Dujiangyan Scenic Area in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province announced that the capacity of tourists to the attraction had reached 57,000, or 95 percent of its total by 11:40 am, and as a result it stopped online sales of tickets.
In addition, Hongyadong, a popular attraction in Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality received a total of 110,000 travelers on Saturday, nearly double the amount of visitors to the area on Thursday, a day before the Golden Week, CCTV reported. It’s estimated that a total of 900,000 travelers will visit the area this Golden Week, according to the report.
The Palace Museum in Beijing had stopped selling tickets for Sunday by noon, with the attraction fully booked until October 6, according to the museum’s online ticket sales system.
Other famous scenic spots including the National Museum of China, Badaling Great Wall and Hunan Museum are either fully booked or no tickets on sale. In order to facilitate more people visit the museum, Hunan Museum has extended service hours and increase capacity by 5,000 per day during the eight-day holiday, according to a statement on its website.
Some video clips online showed crowds in scenic spots and business streets including the Great Wall, the Bund in Shanghai and Nanjing Confucius Temple, also known as Fuzimiao in Chinese. A net user joked, “It’s not tired at all to climb the Great Wall, as you could move only two steps in three minutes.”
According to data released by China Railway, about 17.07 million passenger trips were made by train on Saturday. The amount of passengers traveled by trains remained at high level on Sunday, with 17.2 million people expected to travel by train, and the total number of passenger trains would increase to 11,574 on the same day, an increase of 1,179.
As the travel market continues to explode, Chinese provinces reported remarkable results. By 3 pm on Saturday, a total of 857 A-level scenic spots in Sichuan received a total of 4.39 million travelers and generated ticket revenue of 51.76 million yuan ($7.1 million), up 141.44 percent and 225.88 percent year-on-year, local media outlet Sichuan Daily reported on Sunday.
There will be 896 million domestic tourists traveling during this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays, an increase of 86 percent compared to last year, China Ministry of Culture and Tourism estimated on Saturday.
Revenue from domestic tourism revenue is expected to reach 782.5 billion yuan, a growth of 138 percent compared to last year. This marks the busiest Golden Week in five years, and it demonstrates that the tourism industry is entering a new normal and becoming an important engine driving the country’s economy.
Total box office revenue during the Golden Week in China had already exceeded 1.2 billion yuan as of 3 pm on Sunday, according to data provider Maoyan. The top three performers are all domestic films – Under the Light, Ex-files 4: Marriage Plan, and Korean War-themed epic The Volunteers: To the War.
(Global Times)
