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More leisure days

By Jiang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-22 14:40

Although the holidays were designed to offset impacts from the Southeast Asian economic crisis in 1997 by stimulating domestic demand, people's fervor for it still exceeded the government's expectations.

The country was astonished to see Chinese tourists take 28 million trips while spending 14.1 billion yuan during the first Golden Week in October of 1999. A larger growth was seen a year later when 59.8 million people took trips during the National Day holiday in 2000, while total revenue from tourism reached 23 billion yuan.

In nearly 10 years, diverse forms of tourism have been promoted by people's growing enthusiasm for traveling on weekends and holidays.

In villages around major cities a one- or two-day trip nicknamed the "joyful farmer's house" has prospered in recent years, with city dwellers going to the countryside on weekends to soak up the scenery and chow down on local fare and delicacies.

As train speeds increase and more new flights open, many Chinese also now enjoy setting off on a Friday evening and returning on Monday morning or Sunday night.

In the 20th Golden Week in May 2007, a record 179 million people took trips to the countryside or abroad and poured 73.6 billion yuan into the tourism coffers.

Last year, the number of outbound mainland tourists reached over 50 million, the largest number in Asia. But in 1997, applying for a passport was a major undertaking, let alone traveling abroad.

The forecast from the World Travel Fair 2007 predicts that in 2020 China will be the world's fourth largest tourist source and in 15 years about 100 million Chinese tourists will travel abroad annually.

Tourism is obviously one of the industries that benefits the most from weekends and Golden Weeks, but not all.

People will spend one hour for family time or rest and three for shopping and tourism for every four hours reduced from their working time, calculates Chen Xiongzhang, a professor with Guangxi Normal University.

According to statistics from the National Holiday Office, a government agency established for Golden Week holidays, by May 2007, 20 Golden Week holidays had seen 1.81 billion people spend an accumulated tourism income of 744 billion yuan ($109.03 billion).

China Unionpay, a national bank card network operator, found that consumers spent 29.4 billion yuan with their bank cards during Spring Festival holiday in 2008.

Based on the calculations of the World Tourism Organization: a 1 yuan direct income from tourism means 4.3 yuan for the overall national economy. That is to say the Golden Week holidays have yielded at least 3.2 trillion yuan in the country.

It might be hard to give an exact figure for the overall income from two-day weekends, but the figure is estimated to be up to over 2 trillion yuan.

Leisure's price

However, as the number of tourists expands annually, the Golden Weeks are also becoming a headache for many people. The country's transportation infrastructure, notably train, air and bus routes, is strained and ticket prices skyrocket in the face of overwhelming demands by travelers trying to return to their hometowns and villages.

During the May Day holiday last year, sightseeing in Beijing was hot and sticky as temperatures topped 30 the highest in 40 years for that time of year.

The Summer Palace, a former imperial garden and Beijing's largest park, received 280,000 visitors between May 1 and 4; the Forbidden City received a record 114,800 people on May 2 alone; about 73,000 people a day visited the Badaling section of the Great Wall.

The Quanjude Group, a restaurant chain known for its Peking roast duck and a key stop-off point for first-time visitors, sold about 20,000 ducks in the first three days of the Golden Week. More than 60,000 diners ate at its restaurants between May 1 and 3, spending 12 million yuan.

Beijing buses and subway carried 12 million passengers on the first day of the May holiday alone.

Even the 11 giant pandas at the Beijing Zoo reportedly had to work to 6:30 pm, 30 minutes later than usual, to make the huge number of visitors (100,000 daily on average) happy.

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