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Short trips peak during golden week

By Chen Jia (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-07 07:02

The country witnessed its first peak travel period for this month's "golden week" holiday in the past few days, with many travelers opting for short-distance trips this year.

"I flew back to Beijing three days before the vacation period ends because I plan to make short trips around the capital," Renee Wang, a 25-year-old employee of a Beijing-based advertising company, told China Daily yesterday.

Wang had just visited her parents and attended a friend's wedding in Shenzhen.

"I have the longest golden week holiday yet this year an eight-day surprise, so I don't want to stay in just one place," she said.

The country enjoyed a golden week from October 1 to 8 this year, which included the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations.

Wang was among a large number of people who had planned to travel after visiting family members during the Mid-Autumn Festival on Friday.

Holiday resorts around Beijing will experience "a second travel peak" in the later half of the vacation, the city's tourism bureau said on Saturday.

"I prefer to make short trips in the last few days of the vacation, as a way of avoiding the first travel peak," Beijinger Wang Cheng, 31, said yesterday.

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Last year, he endured a traffic jam for several hours on the way to Beidaihe, a seaside resort about 250 km east of Beijing.

"I'm making a short trip this year to enjoy Daoxianghu Lake in rural Beijing it's only about 50 minutes' drive away," he said.

Roads and railways of major cities also withstood the peak travel in the past week.

The number of cars that left Beijing alone hit 284,000 yesterday, an increase of 21.4 percent from the previous day, the traffic management bureau under the Ministry of Public Security told China Daily yesterday.

The numbers of cars returning to the capital also reached 227,000 yesterday, 5.6 percent more than a record high on Monday, figures from the bureau showed.

Similarly, figures from the Shanghai tourist distribution center marked a travel peak after the Mid-Autumn Festival.

According to the Shanghai Railway Bureau, multiple-unit trains in two newly opened nearby routes had also attracted about 83,000 tourists in 14 stations from September 28 to October 3.

The number of tourists on the Chinese mainland could surpass 200 million during the eight-day holiday, the China Tourism Academy reported earlier.

Tourism income is expected to be more than 100 billion yuan ($14.7 billion), an increase of 25 percent from the same period last year, the report said.

Tourists could spend an average of 500 yuan each, it said.