Inundated tourist sites barricade themselves against sightseeing hordes

Major tourist locations moved to relieve the pressure from "golden week" visitors yesterday - by locking them out - but travel woes continued, prompting experts to question the benefits of such week-long holidays.

Managers of Jiuzhaigou national park in Sichuan province stopped ticket sales on Thursday and yesterday after 41,000 tickets - the daily limit of visitors the park can accommodate - were sold out. The move came after more than 4,000 people were left stranded in the world-famous valley for up to 10 hours on Wednesday.

Some visitors to Emeishan , a Buddhist holy mountain in the southwestern province, were refused entry for the same reason. All 20,000 tickets sold out by 10am, leaving swarms of visitors shut outside the gate, Beijing's Legal Evening News reported.

A new mainland law on tourism, which took effect on Tuesday, says that parks must not sell more tickets than they can accommodate. But there were still breaches. The Forbidden City in Beijing received about 175,000 visitors on Wednesday, more than double the upper limit of 80,000, according to Xinhua.

Thousands of cars jammed a highway between Dali and Lijiang , two famous mountain cities in Yunnan province, extending the 2-1/2-hour drive on the 200 kilometre highway to more than 10 hours on Thursday night. Traffic was still heavy yesterday afternoon.

In Guizhou , two groups of visitors brawled in front of thousands of others over seats for a tourist performance by Miao ethnic dancers.