The week-long holiday for China’s National Day (which has
just finished) has always been the busiest week for internal tourism within the
country, with hordes of visitors jostling for space at all the country’s major
and minor attractions. As more and more Chinese have the money to travel internally,
the number of people moving within the country during the holidays is becoming
increasingly unsustainable.
This year new peaks of overcrowding have been reached. The Forbidden City received 182.000 visitors on the 2nd of October, an all time record for a single day. According to an article in Xinhua, by the 3rd of October the 119 national tourist sites under monitoring (supposedly the most important ones) had received 609 million visitors! That would be half the population of China.
This year new peaks of overcrowding have been reached. The Forbidden City received 182.000 visitors on the 2nd of October, an all time record for a single day. According to an article in Xinhua, by the 3rd of October the 119 national tourist sites under monitoring (supposedly the most important ones) had received 609 million visitors! That would be half the population of China.
Many tourist sites were working at almost ten times their optimal
capacity. In Dunhuang, Gansu Province, some camels died from overwork after
carrying tourists back and forth for days. On Mount Hua, Shaanxi Province,
thousands of visitors were stuck until midnight on the 2nd of
October, because the cable cars were unable to cope with the crowds. There were
chaotic scenes as visitors were refused entry, others demanded refunds, and a
few fights broke out between visitors and staff.
Personally I had never traveled during the National Day
holidays, but I had the brilliant idea to do so for the first time this year,
thus joining this madness (and adding to it I suppose). What’s more I had the
even better idea to go to Hangzhou, one of China’s most popular tourist
destinations of all (well it wasn’t really my idea, a Chinese friend who was
going there suggested I come along).
Hangzhou is a big city just
south of Shanghai.
The main attraction is the West
Lake, a large lake at the
center of the city which is renowned throughout the country for its beauty and
its historical relics. The Lake has influenced
Chinese poets and artists throughout the ages, and it is associated with
numerous important figures in the country’s history. As the Chinese saying
goes, 上有天堂,下有苏杭 (above there is heaven, below there are Suzhou
and Hangzhou).
As one might imagine, train tickets for the holiday period
are extremely hard to come by, even if you start queuing on the morning of the
first day when the tickets you need are on sale. Flights cost double the usual
amount. Somehow my friend managed to get me a ticket for the Beijing-Hangzhou
high speed railway for the first day of the holiday. It must be said that the
new high speed trains connecting China’s major coastal cities really
are very fast. This particular train takes only six and a half hours to get
from Beijing to Hangzhou, a distance only slightly shorter than going from
London to Nice.
Hotels also tend to be fully booked during the holidays, and
I had to settle for an expensive and overpriced room in Home Inn. What has
really stayed with me of Hangzhou’s West Lake is not the beauty of the Lake,
but the size of the crowds swarming around it. The Lake
is kilometers long in circumference, but there were so many tour groups on site that it was almost impossible to move. I tried renting a bike, but the road around the lake was so
packed with people, cars and other tourists on rented bicycles that cycling was
both difficult and potentially dangerous. Honestly I doubt that I would have
found the Lake as beautiful as most Chinese visitors do even at the best of
times, but I was so fed up with the constant mass of people surrounding me on
all sides that I really couldn’t focus on its supposed beauty anyway.
My friend and I attempted to visit the famous Lei Feng
Pagoda (no connection with the selfless soldier of Maoist
propaganda; the second character is slightly different). There was such a mass
of Chinese humanity swarming around it that I felt dizzy by the time I got
near. Spotting my friend was utterly hopeless, and we had to go to the closest
bus stop to find each other. By then we both agreed that we had no interest in visiting
the pagoda anymore, especially since we would have had to queue for hours to
get in.
My original plan was to continue traveling to Henan Province
after going to Hangzhou, but after a few days I was so fed up that I just booked a
flight back to Beijing on the 4th of October and spent the remainder
of the holiday in my flat.
This year many Chinese holidaymakers have also complained that the size of
the crowds at the places they visited affected their enjoyment of the vacation,
in spite of the Chinese tolerance for overcrowded environments. It is clear
that having hundreds of millions of people traveling through China at the same
time and visiting the same places is becoming unfeasible, damaging for the
tourist sites, uncomfortable and even dangerous (especially for the poor camels
in Dunhuang). In any case, I know that I am not traveling anywhere in China
for the National Day ever again.
(Above: tourists turning Tiananmen Square into a campsite over the holidays)
