More than 200 million Chinese will travel to enjoy Lunar New Year

More than 200 million Chinese tourists in total are expected to travel this week as mainlanders make the most of the Lunar New Year holiday.

According to a China Tourism Academy survey, 225 million mainlanders will travel during the one-week holiday, 10.8 per cent up from last year, and spend 130 billion yuan (HK$165 billion), up 11.1 per cent.

A massive 100,500 tourists squeezed onto the small island of Gulangyu Island on Monday - more than five times the island’s population.

This is despite China’s Vice-Premier Wang Yang in May 2013 acknowledging that “uncivilised behaviour” by its citizens abroad was harming the country’s image. He cited “talking loudly in public places, jaywalking, spitting and wilfully carving characters on items in scenic zones”.

Destination countries have been easing visa restrictions to attract more tourists from China, but reports have emerged of complaints about etiquette. The mainland tourists boarded ferries to the two square kilometre island between 4pm on February 2 and 4pm on February 3, according to China’s National Tourism Administration.

According to the Xiamen Urban Planning and Design Institute, the island’s ideal daily limit is just 13,000 and 3,900 at the extreme. The pedestrianised island off Xiamen in Fujian province is smaller than Cheung Chau and has been designated a National Scenic Area.

The city is considering capping the number of tourists to Gulangyu.

According to the China Tourism Academy, 32 per cent of those travellers will stay on the mainland, with top destinations including Sanya, Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Yunnan and Dongbei provinces. The remaining 68 per cent will travel abroad or visit Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan.

Another 1.93 million tourists visited Chongqing on Monday while 71,500 visited Hangzhou in Zhejiang province.

In Hainan province, 35,000 people visited Tianya Haijiao, 43,900 visited Nanshan and 16,000 visited Yalong Bay National Resort.

A total of 54,000 tourists visited Ice and Snow World and Sun Island in Harbin province, while 26 scenic areas in Shandong province reported 369,000 visitors.

Over the first three days of the Lunar New Year holiday, 3.87 million tourists visited Beijing’s scenic areas and 1.79 million visited Shanghai. Ten scenic areas in Jiangsu province reported 1.86 million visitors, 6.42 million visited Liaoning province and 1.5 million visited Hubei province.

Another 2.6 million visited Guangdong province on the first day, 30 per cent up from last year, and 609,000 visited Yunnan province.

On the second day, almost 392,800 visited Tianjin and 892,800 visited Guizhou province, 22.5 per cent up from last year.