If you plan on going sightseeing right now in China, you might want to reconsider. That is, unless you like huge crowds and being pressed up against strangers. If so, go now. And quick!
It’s “National Day Golden Week” in China, which is a seven-day holiday that kicks off every year on October 1, the day the People’s Republic of China was founded back in 1949.
Since it’s a week-long holiday, it seems like the entire country goes on holidays, causing tourist sites to overflow with people. And since the Chinese government made national highways toll-free starting last year, the Golden Week holidays are leading to bigger and bigger traffic jams.
Here, you can see photos, courtesy of photojournalist Sean Gallagher and SkyNews’ Mark Stone (both via Business Insider):
Train stations and airports are also packed with travellers.
Locations like the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen get swamped with the most tourists — and can see well over a hundred thousand visitors each day.
But as Beijing-based Kotaku writer Eric Jou points out, not everywhere is crowded — the non-touristy areas can even seem dead. But where it is crowded, such as the tourist spots, it’s wall to wall humans.
That’s Eric Jou.
Photos: News.Cn, Longhoo, WyNews, BackChina, Xinhuanet, People.com.cn, Tiexue Eric Jou contributed to this article.
Comments
24 responses to “Let China Show You What Crowded Really Means”
Circular Quay (and George Street beyond the QVB) was worse than this tonight.
China ain’t got nothin’ on people wanting to see fireworks.
Just wait until the Golden Week fireworks display photos come rolling in. 😉
That’s why I haven’t been to riverfire for over 10 years now. Fireworks are awesome but getting through the crowd to get home makes it not worth it.
yeah pretty sure they have fireworks displays in china too – the chinese invented fireworks
Ugh you’ll never find me in a crowd of that many people. The pictures alone make me feel sick
Yep, dat plague.
People need to stop breeding, picture is gross.
Wow, that’s crazy. Wife and I were in Beijing in March, stuff all in the way of tourists (fair enough it was towards the end of their winter). Forbidden city was pretty awesome, Tianamen square was OK though rather boring, with exception to the massive Chairman Mao posters all over the place and only took us about 10 mins to get through the lines and into such places. Great Wall was also very quiet that time of year, no lines, stuff all tourists, incredible views. In general, aside from the pollution the place is rather good. With exception to its indigenous inhabitants. Never before have I seen such a disgusting bunch of human beings. Spitting, snorting, people coughing up a lung every 5 seconds, kids pissing/pooing on sidewalks.
Several European cities are like that too, unfortunately, except it’s adults pissing and shitting in public, not just kids.
Really? I’ve been to like 14 countries across Europe. I think in Russia I saw a toddler urinating and that was it..
My aunt has lectured at universities in a number of countries. She said Paris was particularly bad for it, as well as parts of Czech Republic and a few other central countries I can’t call to mind offhand.
Just got back from a 3 month trip around India…Saw people literally rotting to pieces and dying in pools of their own excrement on the sidewalk. Not to mention the ubiquitous public defecation/urination and expectoration etc. Oh and people bathing 10m away from funerary ghats in Varanasi where the dead (240 a day) are dunked pre-cremation and once consigned to their fiery end have their charred remains placed back in. (They also tie infants, the snake bitten dead and other ‘pure’ souls to rocks and just sink them into the Ganges, no need for cleansing fire).
I’m not down on the place, it was an amazing experience and I loved almost every moment, but there was definitely a little ethnocentric based distaste at a bit of what I saw there.
So you loved the place but hated the people?
I was there a few years ago, didn’t see one person spit. I grew up in north qld where everyone spits all the time.
Eww. Bladhy Queenslanders 😉
Yeah, it’s really gross. I’ll never understand the temptation to just work up a big loogey and let fly. Usually on something that people will sit on/touch.
I mean if you’ve got a cold and noone’s around, sure get rid of that stuff but in public, with pride? Not cool.
Me neither. I hope you’ve moved somewhere more civilised since 🙂
Brisbane. YEAH!!!!
Like, the cultural heart of Australia. We have a museum and everything!
So, where do all those people go on non-holidays?
Other parts of China. This and the Chinese new year both involve long pilgrimages (as muntedewok mentioned below), and for many workers it’s the two times a year they get a chance to spend with their family because their work is in a different provinces.
It’s actually crazy, they really do holiday a lot in their own country. Apparently it’s a bit of a pilgrimage for a lot of people to go to places like Forbidden City and Great Wall. They have a very rich history.
All that we need now is to phtoshop some zombies in the backgrounds
Okay – when I travel to China I need to not go during the beginning of October. Thanks for the tip.
Oh dear. My sister left for China on Thursday. Guaranteed, the only places she’ll want to go are on the tourist trails.
Seeing places like the Great Wall would be horrible amongst those kinds of crowds.
Ouch
Going to China “during” a festival sounds great in theory but these pictures show the reality of it. It’s not just the October National Day holiday.. it’s every single major holiday.. Spring Festival being at the top of the list for masses of people moving across the country. National Day and Spring Festival are the big ones but not the only ones..
Sometime between the end of Spring Festival (last February) and the Tomb Sweeping holiday (I think it’s in May?) is a good time to go if you want to see the season of Spring.. another time would be between the end of the National Day holiday (around now) till the start of the Spring Festival (around mid-January) would be good if you want to see Autumn-Winter..