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About 1.6 billion travelers! More than 670 billion yuan ($86 billion) contributed to the economy. And boom time for airlines, railways and bus operators, tourism and trade, and restaurants and hotels!

 

That in short is what the past 19 Golden Week holidays have meant.

 

The ongoing May Day Golden Week holidays, for instance, will see an estimated 150 million people traveling across the country.

 

Hence, it is not advisable to abolish the Golden Week holidays, National Tourism Administration (NTA) Vice-Director Zhang Xiqin said in an interview with CCTV on Tuesday.

 

The three Golden Week holidays (the Spring Festival and the National Day are the other two) do cause some problems, though. On Tuesday, more than a thousand people were reported "lost" on Beijing's expansive Tian'anmen Square, and two persons were crushed to death and four injured when a thousand-year-old banyan tree crashed during a visitor rush in the Gulong Temple complex in Huanglongxi Town of southwest China's Sichuan Province.

 

But such accidents cannot be blamed on holidays. They can happen any day. In fact, police say visitors get lost on Tian'anmen Square even on normal days. But in the end the lost persons are united with their friends and kin, just like they were on Tuesday.

 

The number of travelers and the economic benefits during the three special holidays account for about 25 percent of the annual domestic tourism market, Zhang said.

 

On the whole, "the system of Golden Week holidays has operated orderly and won universal support from the public".

 

Hence, "it will go against the common will of the people if we cancel the special holidays that have become part of their lives", he said.

 

Zhang conceded, though, that the three major holidays have added pressure to transport and the environment. Problems such as lower service quality and higher price can be partly blamed on them, too.

 

But look at the benefits: a Ministry of Railways spokesman said the number of passengers hit a record for the May Day holidays, with 5.16 million people traveling on trains on Monday alone.

 

He estimated that from April 28 to May 7, 44.5 million people would travel on trains, up 8 percent year-on-year.

 

This is the first Golden Week since the latest increase in the speed of trains. So Beijing West Railway Station expects the number of passengers to swell to 1.15 million during the holidays, an increase of 145,000 year-on-year, a railway official said.

 

(Xinhua News Agency May 3, 2007)