Jack Liang

jackliang001@qq.com

AS the “Golden Week” National Day holiday is on the horizon, many people in China are planning their vacations these days.

Thanks to China’s rapid and steady economic development in recent decades, the incomes and living standards of Chinese people have been lifted to reach such a point where tourism has increasingly become an essential part of their lives.

Moreover, China’s remarkable feats in the developments of transportation infrastructures, especially the high-speed railway network, which is hailed as the fastest and longest on the planet, provide many opportunities for Chinese people to move across the country’s vast lands in as short as a few hours.

As the result of these advancements, China has been witnessing a gargantuan amount of people traveling out of their local areas via private cars, bullet trains or airplanes during public holidays in recent years.

Recently a piece of news drew the attention of many vacation-goers in China, saying that the high-speed train tickets for the first two days of this year’s National Day holiday, which falls on from Oct.1 to Oct. 8, from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou Province, had instantly sold out just moments after these tickets were made available online on the official ticket-selling site 12306.com.

It reveals a somewhat “bittersweet” reality which most of us have been faced with for years — starting what we wish to be a light-hearted vacation in a stressful way by struggling desperately to clutch a ticket for travel. While we are all looking forward to having a blithesome trip, and to getting back to work refreshed after a nice vacation, more often than not, we end up being exhausted at the end of it, both physically and mentally.

Nevertheless, despite this troublesomeness, an overwhelming number of people would still choose to go out of town, seeking a short retreat from the hustle and bustle of their daily lives. But are they really going to enjoy what they are anticipating in a so concentrated session of tourism?

No, I am afraid they are not.

I personally will not join the migrating troops of hundreds of millions of people moving between their homes and tourist destinations, not because of my lack of interest in visiting new places, but of fear of being stuck in crowds either en route to my destination or in it as well.

What exactly is the point of jostling your way through “people mountain people sea” only to get a glimpse of what is supposed to be the grandeur of nature, or a spectacle of any kind over someone’s shoulders? And on top of that poor level of “enjoyment,” you are most likely to have to fork out far more than usual on everything needed for a trip, including transportation, hotels, food and other stuff.

Plain and simple, it is neither comfortable, nor economical.

In light of this, some prudent people would rather stay at home when a public holiday comes. Instead of traveling a long way to other places, they can do a variety of outdoor activities instead, like hiking, cycling, playing football, the list goes on, enjoying their leisure time near to home.

Others are finding their own way out.

For an increasing number of Chinese people nowadays, going abroad looks like a better way to spend the long holiday. They will be flocking to some adjacent countries, like Japan, Thailand and Malaysia, and also to some long-favored Western countries, such as France, Germany and the U.S. Indeed compared with traveling domestically, they are more likely to have a better tourist experience that is well worth their money.

Hopefully, with China’s further advancements towards even larger capacities of transportation and much greater volume of various developed tourist resources in the coming years, those bittersweet moments of traveling during a public holiday in China will one day become a memory of the past.

(The author, a graduate of the University of International Business and Economics and Xi’an Jiaotong University, works in a State-owned company in Shenzhen.)