Visitors flocking to the Pudong area of Shanghai, during Spring Festival. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The Pudong New District of Shanghai played host to nearly a million visitors during the Spring Festival holiday, Feb 7 - 13, or about a quarter of the city's total, the local media reported on Feb 16, noting that the hot spots were in the Lujiazui area, with 137,000 people visiting Oriental Pearl TV Tower, 65,000 going to Jinmao Tower, and 135,000 to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.

To attract more of these people, tourist sites also carried activities dealing with monkeys, since 2016 is the Year of Monkey in the Chinese lunar calendar. Jinmao Tower, for example, got a prominent performer to dress up as Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, from the famous novel Journey to the West, and to interact with visitors, while the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum put on an exhibition with a monkey theme.

The visitor surge also propelled Pudong business, where one report of 30 shopping malls, supermarkets, restaurants and hotels showed sales totalling 380 million yuan ($58.3 million) for the 7-day period.