It is the seventh year that the Chinese government gave "Golden Week" holiday, or seven-day holiday, on the National Day, the May Day and the Spring Festival every year. Chinese citizens' options of spending the holidays began to change.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics made a sample survey among the citizens of the city's 18 districts on the eve of the National Day holiday, showing that 78.1 percent of the respondents chose to stay at home during the week-long National Day holiday, giving the reason that tourism destinations are too crowded. They could not be relaxed, but may get in trouble in tourism.

However, when the Chinese government initiated the "Golden Week" holiday in 1999, citizen's attitudes were different.

During the National Day holiday of 1999, also China's first "Golden Week" holiday, the country's tourism destinations received totally 28 million tourists and the tourism revenue reached 14.1 billion yuan.

Since then, the country's number of tourists and tourism revenue soared in the consecutive "Golden Week" holidays. The May Day holiday of the 2005 even saw 121 million tourists and the tourism revenue amounted to 46.7 million yuan, up 332 percent and 231 percent from the figures of the first "Golden Week" holiday.

However, behind the prosperous scene, problems such as poor tourism services, poor infrastructure in tourism destinations, excessive development of tourist resources, frequent occurrence of accidents, emerged.

Chen Gaoqin, head of the Tourism Institute under the China Management Scientific Research Institute said governments were taking efforts to summarize experiences and improve their service quality of the "Golden Week" holiday, while citizens were becoming more rational toward the holiday tourism.

Shao Qiwei, director of the State Tourism Administration admitted that today, citizens' entertainment focus has somewhat shifted from "long march" tourism to be urban cultural entertainments, such as shopping, eating-out and karaoke.

He still expressed strong optimism about the "Golden Week" holiday tourism market, saying that as long as the tourism services are constantly improved and the tourism products are varied, the holiday tourism market will be rational and prosperous.

(Xinhua News Agency October 8, 2005)