Sunday Times 2
‘Sea of People’ flock to China’s Great Wall
Tourists clamouring to climb the Great Wall of China take photo-bombing to an extreme with barely a brick of the 5500 mile ancient structure visible in this image. ‘It’s easy for a camera with face recognition to break down in this situation!’ quipped one visitor who took a picture of the famous World Heritage site and posted it on China’s version of Twitter, Weibo.
The startling scene has gone viral around the world – and has been dubbed the ‘Great Queue of China’.
Built over centuries by various emperors to keep out the maundering Mongolian hordes led by the likes of Genghis Khan, some sections have been reinforced and turned into theme parks to cater to waves of the new intruders – day trippers.
Ever since Chairman Mao Zedong declared that ‘you aren’t a good Chinese until you’ve been to the Great Wall’, millions make the pilgrimage each year, with this part called Badaling just north of the capital Beijing, proving popular.
And with this week marking an extended Mid-Autumn Festival vacation, queueing to place a sacred footstep on history proved a memorable feat of endurance for most.
The Great Wall was one of several tourists attractions overwhelmed by visitor numbers as more and more Chinese spend more money on leisure and travel farther afield in the world’s biggest car market to soak up their country’s 5000 years of history.
The China Tourism Academy estimated 362 million travellers have been on the move over the week long holiday.
The government’s strict vacation timetable puts more than 1.35 billion people on vacation for a week at exactly the same time – and now critics are calling for the vacation policy to be urgently revised and spread over the year.
The Forbidden City in the heart of Beijing, which was once a walled community of 9000, recorded 180,000 visitors in one day this week.
‘We saw absolutely nothing but people’s heads,’ said Guo Zhijun, 42, from Henan province. ‘We wanted our 11-year-old son to learn something from the trip, but we only ended up exhausted,’ he said.
The country’s great engineering feats are also proving a hit with tourists and causing headaches for crowd controllers.
The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River had to deploy barriers to bring order to long queues swamping the mega structure. And thousands of tourists were left stranded on Mount Hua – a scenic spot – when the tram network taking them to the summit was overwhelmed.
A team of 300 police climbed the mountain on foot to rescue them.
© Daily Mail, London
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