If you know a scenic spot that you think would be nice to visit at the weekend, chances are a few thousand others have had the same idea.

Paralyzed traffic, endless waiting, queues like rugby scrums with pushing and squeezing to match; All of this and more await anyone deciding to head for Beijing's Fragrant Hills, 20 kilometers northwest of the city.

Every autumn, when the leaves on the mountain's 90,000 maple-like smoketrees blaze red following the season's first frost, tens of thousands of visitors pour into the park, to experience the "essence of autumn."

It is an amazing picture: The mountain looks like a natural colorful brocade of red smoketrees, green pines, yellow ginkgo trees and orange persimmon trees.

Black zigzagging threads of hikers, packing roads and footpaths that wind through the trees, appear to hold the patchwork together. Nineteen-year-old Chen Yanliang was one of those who headed for the hills last weekend.

Studying at a high school in eastern Beijing's Tongzhou District, Chen and four of his classmates started their "epic" journey to the Fragrant Hills at 7:00 am on Saturday morning.

"Every bus to the Fragrant Hills was really overcrowded," Chen said. "We could not squeeze on until the fourth bus No 318 came. Almost all the passengers on the bus were heading to the same place the Fragrant Hills."

It took Chen more than three hours to get to the foot of the Fragrant Hills, a place he had never been before.

"I already felt drained when I got off the bus," Chen complained. "I had to stand all the way, and was being pushed and squeezed the whole journey."

The hike up the mountain was an even bigger challenge. "The five of us had to squeeze on to one step while we queued to climb the trail," Chen said after a snail's pace assent of the mountain.

Almost every visitor to the Fragrant Hills on Saturday told the same story. But when compared to the previous weekend, Saturday's turnout was not so bad. On October 23, the hills saw 60,000 pairs of feet tramp their slopes.

According to Kang Ling, an official with the management office of the Fragrant Hills, the number of visitors on Saturday was "obviously less" than on October 23.

A ticket seller on bus No 331 route agreed with Kang. "Last Sunday, it took my bus three and a half hours to go from the Fragrant Hills to the Xiangquan circle," he said. It is usually a 10-minute bus ride away, "All the buses and cars were stuck as there were too many vehicles and only one way back to Beijing."

(China Daily October 31, 2005)