China's "Golden Week" holiday justified its title with a rise in tourism revenue, National Tourism Administration (NTA) statistics showed Sunday.
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The country's 119 major scenic spots received a total of 34.25 million visitors during the eight-day holiday, up 20.96 percent from the corresponding period last year. Tourism income surged by nearly a quarter from 2011 to 1.77 billion yuan (278.39 million U.S. dollars), the NTA said.
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The administration said many scenic spots, including the Forbidden City, attracted record volumes of visitors during the longest-ever "Golden Week" bridging the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holiday.
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On Tuesday, 186,000 people visited the Forbidden City, or the Palace Museum at the heart of Beijing -- the largest single-day number of visitors ever.
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But the holiday tour spree also gave rise to complaints among the public about unpleasantly crowded scenic spots and restaurants as well as traffic congestion.
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On Wednesday, thousands of vehicles jammed two mountain roads winding to and out of the Lushan Mountain scenic area in eastern China.
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The week witnessed a significant increase in the number of individual road travelers because of the government's policy that exempts passenger cars from road tolls during the holiday.
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The policy resulted in unprecedented traffic and caused heavy congestion on major expressways.
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According to statistics from the Ministry of Transport, a record of 80.87 million people traveled by road each day during the holiday, adding the total volume to 647 million.
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Meanwhile, the country's trains carried 60.95 million passengers, up 9.4 percent year on year, while the number of airway travelers hit 7.61 million from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6.
