Tourist attractions across China saw a growing stream of visitors on Saturday, the first day of the three-day Qingming Festival holiday.
The Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, is a traditional Chinese festival for honoring the deceased and paying tribute to ancestors. The holiday also provides a short break for the Chinese people as they engage in outdoor activities and sightseeing.
At Baofeng Lake tourist attraction in Zhangjiajie City, central China's Hunan Province, visitor numbers have surged significantly with the arrival of the holiday.
At Taiyang Square on the Chilechuan grassland in Hohhot, capital city of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, giant kites from Weifang City in east China's Shandong Province, known as the "kite capital of the world", soared alongside Hohhot's distinctive kites. The display skillfully blended traditional intangible cultural heritage with the city's cultural symbols, drawing crowds of locals and tourists.
In Shandong's Gaomi City, the Qingming Festival is marked by the traditional custom of eating pancakes rolled with eggs. A rural pancake-making competition is underway in full swing, with more than 200 local contestants competing over five days for the fastest rolling speed and the highest-quality pancakes.
The event attracts thousands of visitors and spectators daily, who come to explore the market, take a bite of local delicacies, and immerse themselves in the charm of rural folk customs.
According to staff at the Xisaishan National Tourism Resort in Huzhou City, east China's Zhejiang Province, large flocks of egrets migrate here each year from March to October to nest and breed.
Egrets are highly selective in choosing their habitat, which is why they are often considered a barometer of the ecological environment. Their presence at the resort serves as the best testament to Xisaishan's exceptional ecological conditions.
At this time of year, Xisaishan is teeming with greenery, offering clear waters and stunning scenery, making it an ideal destination for camping.
Leveraging the area's premium resources including 3,000 mu (200 hectares) of pine forests and a 120-mu (eight hectares) reservoir, the resort has established a wilderness camping base that features 30 wooden tent cabins.
All accommodations at the campground were fully booked well ahead of this year's Qingming Festival holiday. Many visitors came from nearby provinces and cities such as Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Hangzhou, who took advantage of the holiday to bring their children closer to nature.
In addition to camping, the campground has organized a series of immersive activities, including kite flying, boating on the lake, and digging for spring bamboo shoots. Among them, the most popular attraction is a dish cooked over a wildfire, essentially a large-pot rice dish prepared with local seasonal ingredients such as spring bamboo shoots, peas, and cured meat.
A steady stream of visitors flowed into the Liudingshan Tourist Attraction in Dunhua City, Jilin Province, on Saturday. By morning, more than 1,000 vehicles had entered the scenic area's parking lot, marking a significant increase compared to the same period last year. The number of visitors also rose by 25 percent year-over-year.
This surge can be largely attributed to substantial local incentive policies.
From April 1 to April 30, the scenic area's parking lot is open 24 hours a day and free of charge. Non-local visitors arriving in Dunhua can also enjoy a 50-percent discount on attraction tickets by presenting a high-speed rail ticket issued within the past 48 hours.
In addition, local residents can enter the scenic area for free; if they bring relatives or friends from out of town, those guests can enjoy tiered discounts ranging from 50 percent to 60 percent of the ticket price, while group tickets organized by travel agencies also receive a 50-percent discount.
Across Jilin, many locations are launching initiatives simultaneously, with a total of 37 public welfare measures being introduced.
These include reduced or waived admission fees, discounts on dining and lodging, and special offers on cultural and tourism experiences, all designed to lower the overall travel cost.
At the Changbai Mountain Scenic Area, the north and west parts of it offer free admission to visitors worldwide from March 31 to April 30.
The Liudingshan scenic area has organized a special intangible cultural heritage market for the holiday season, showcasing unique products such as Songhua inkstones, carved from the local Dunhua specialty Songhua stone with intricate patterns, and knife paintings. In these paintings, inheritors of intangible cultural heritage use knives as brushes and ink as color to vividly portray the grandeur of Changbai Mountain and other landscapes.
Tourism booms during Qingming Festival holiday across China
