Big crowds but better management at China’s main tourist attractions mark a less-stressful start to ‘golden week’ holiday

Beijing’s Forbidden City sold two tickets every second while people joked they could stroll their dogs and make friends on multiple-lane expressways that had been turned into temporary car parks at the National Day “golden week” got underway.

Visitors swarmed to many tourist attractions that quickly reached capacity on Thursday, China’s National Day, as the annual week-long holiday officially kicked off.

As in previous years, tourists thronged to the famous West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, the Zhejiang Daily reported. Parks and attractions around the lake received 388,000 of the 1.55 million tourists who converged on Hangzhou on Thursday.

According to AutoNavi, a web-based map and navigation service, the West Lake, Tiananmen Square and the ancient walled city of Pingyao in Shanxi province were the country’s most crowded tourist attractions.

Beijing, which was buffeted by gusts of up to 75km/h, saw tourists with 1.15 million visitors, a 13 per cent drop from last year, according to the Beijing Youth Daily.