Over 100,000 mainland Chinese tourists squeeze onto tiny Gulangyu

More than 100,000 tourists squeezed onto tiny Gulangyu, an island off the coast off Fujian province, in one 24-hour period as mainlanders made the most of the Lunar New Year holiday, albeit it with the least amount of elbow room.

A massive 100,500 tourists boarded ferries to Gulangyu between 4pm on Sunday and 4pm on Monday, the China National Tourism Administration said. That is more than five times the island's population.

The island had received over 66,000 visitors by yesterday afternoon, said its official website.

The two-square-kilometre, car-free island off Xiamen is smaller than Cheung Chau in Hong Kong and is a national scenic area famed for its 19th-century foreign architecture.

According to the Xiamen Urban Planning and Design Institute, the island's ideal daily limit for visitors is 13,000 and 39,000 if pushed to the limit. The city is considering capping the number of tourists.

The Xiamen Daily reported there were noticeably more visitors from outside the province and numbers could continue to rise in the days following the Lunar New Year holiday.

The Lunar New Year is one of the two peak travel times of the year on the mainland. Authorities in Macau introduced one-way routes for pedestrian to cope with crowds during the holidays.