Tourist attractions across China are seeing a surge in the number of visitors, as people go outing to enjoy spring scenery during the three-day Qingming holiday season which started on Friday.
Although the Qingming Festival, also known as the Tomb-Sweeping Day holiday, is a time-honored traditional event for Chinese families to pay tribute to the deceased and worship their ancestors by visiting tombs, increasing numbers of the people nowadays use the holiday season around it as an occasion to make spring outing and enjoy leisure entertainment.
At the Mount Wuyi National Park in east China's Fujian Province, the stunning natural scenery attracts tourists from all across the country. According to statistics, the park received 32,000 tourist visits in the past two days, a sharp year-on-year increase of 186 percent. The average occupancy rate of local hotels is above 80 percent.
"We've also visited the Mount Wuyi Scenic Area, which is very nice with beautiful natural scenery. This route allows us to experience a more pristine scenery," said Chen Yawen, a tourist. In addition to enjoying the natural scenery, tourists can also experience the local traditional tea culture by personally participating the whole process of tea making. A landscape live performance combining natural scenery and cultural performances attracted over 12,000 visits in the past two days.
In Shiyan City of central China's Hubei Province, tourists are seen flocking to a large cherry plantation known as the "Cherry Blossom Corridor", to feel the breath of spring and enjoy the pleasant time of flower viewing.
"The weather is very good today, and it is also the season when cherry blossoms are in full bloom, which can make us feel happier and make our life better," said Ma Mei, a tourist. In Xinghua City of east China's Jiangsu Province, a tourism route featuring water scenery connects many old towns and scenic spots. The beautiful water town scenery, combined with performances with local characteristics, have fascinated many tourists during the holiday.
Dunhuang City in northwest China's Gansu Province, renowned for its Mogao Grottoes, has become an even more vibrant tourist hotspot during the Qingming holiday.
In the past two days, Dunhuang received 174,000 tourist visits. The estimated number of tourist visits during the entire holiday season is expected to reach more than 280,000, an increase of 12 percent year on year.
The Yueyaquan (Crescent Spring) Scenic Area, located at the foot of the Mingsha Mountain of Dunhuang, held a kite flying competition during the holiday, which followed the local Qingming customs recorded in the Dunhuang murals.
At the historic Yangguan Pass, another popular tourism attraction in the province, visitors participated in a simulated construction of the Great Wall, and experienced military drills of old times to personally experience the culture and wisdom of the ancestors.
"We've particularly come to see the Yangguan Pass. I had learned about it in poems before, but this time I've seen it in reality, and it is indeed a very different experience," said Wang Qingqing, a tourist from southwest China's Sichuan Province.
China's tourism spots see surge in visitors during Qingming Festival holiday
China's real estate policies over the next five years in the country’s new economic plan, are set to place more emphasis on ensuring people's wellbeing, while emphasizing improved living quality in the quest for high-quality development of the real estate market, effectively meeting residents' demand for more comfortable housing conditions, according to Wu Jing, director of the real estate research center at Tsinghua University .
On Friday, China officially unveiled the outline of the 15th Five-Year (2026-2030) Plan for national economic and social development, which includes a focus on the real estate sector.
The outline calls for efforts to accelerate the development of a new model for real estate development and to improve the housing system, featuring multiple suppliers and various channels of support that encourage both rentals and purchases, to achieve a higher level of housing security.
Wu pointed out that the efforts signal that ensuring people’s well-being is a key development direction.
Meanwhile, the outline elaborates on the need to optimize the supply of affordable housing and puts forward more detailed requirements regarding the target groups, management processes and sources of affordable housing, and reforms to the housing provident fund system.
Wu said the core objective is to ensure people's housing needs are met.
"The outline specifies a more refined housing security system, proposing requirements such as improving the entire process of affordable housing management, exploring the orderly conversion and coordinated use of affordable housing for both rental and purchase purposes, and deepening the reform of the housing provident fund system. It also requires the housing security system to place greater emphasis on families with multiple children. All of these reflect that the coverage of the housing security system is expanding, its precision is improving, and it will be better integrated with population policies," he said.
In addition to ensuring people’s well-being, the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan makes arrangements for promoting the stable and healthy development of the real estate market.
It urges efforts to improve basic systems for housing development, financing, and sales, and advance the sale of existing homes.
Meanwhile, it stresses local governments should be granted greater autonomy, making regulation more precise and effective, and more closely aligned with local needs.
Furthermore, it calls for building safe, comfortable, green and intelligent homes, and establishing a full life-cycle safety management system for housing.
"Most notably, the construction of basic systems has entered a substantial stage of advancement. Specific requirements are put forward, and measures are deployed to promote the sale of existing homes in a powerful and orderly manner. These are fundamental solutions to prevent risks and constitute the core institutional cornerstone for building a new model of real estate development," said Wu.
To effectively implement the policies outlined, pilot programs can be carried out in certain cities or projects and then gradually expanded, laying a solid foundation for the stable and healthy development of the real estate market, said Wu.
China to prioritize people's wellbeing, increase housing conditions in 2026-2030 Five-Year Plan
