Scenic Spots Nationwide See Record High Ticket Sales

A couple of China's favorite scenic spots have received a record number of tourists during the seven-day Labor Day holiday.

The World Horticulture Expo garden in southwestern Yunnan Province has hosted a daily average of 21,000 visitors in the past four days, with the largest tally at 23,000 on May 1, the first day of the holiday.

That number also stands as the all-time high since October 31, 1999 when the expo concluded.

The Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang City, northwest China's Gansu Province, sold 15,000 tickets on May 2 and 3, setting a record for daily visitors to the world's largest cave fresco collection.

Di Huizhong, a researcher at the caves, said that the historic site's administrators had predicted only 2,000 to 3,000 travelers daily at best, and were shocked at the size of the crowds. The ticket price was cut from 50 yuan (about 6 U.S. dollars) to 20 yuan, and service men, students, the handicapped, and people over 70 get into the caves for free from May 1 to May 4.

All of Dunhuang's hotels and hostels are completely booked, and overflow crowds have been moved to hotels in nearby counties.

Di said that the total number of holiday travelers will be around 30,000 to 40,000, with most coming from Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai, Qinghai, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.



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