It’s currently a national holiday in China. Actually, it’s the National Holiday — a few days off to mark the founding of the People’s Republic back in 1949. It’s sort a week-long holiday, except that most people had to work the previous weekend (so did a seven-day straight work week right before), a confusing concept that get lots of people annoyed but never seems to change.
Not that we have a bugbear about that.
Anyway, the so-called “Golden Week” is a holiday where a combination of more than just a couple of days off and less pressure to return to the family home (often the case for Chinese New Year, for example) result in huge numbers of people inundating tourists attractions across the country. This leads to some hilarious-if-you’re-watching-from-home scenes.
Behold, the Great Wall of China!
Looks delightful, right? That Douyin video was supposedly shot yesterday so there’s still a few days left for you to get out there and see… someone’s armpit.
In Shanghai, it’s so busy the army has been called out to help people cross from the city’s main pedestrianized shopping street toward its historic waterfront Bund area. They patrol this part of town every year around this time, and you can kind of see why in this shot from an Instagram account you really ought to recognize:
There is, of course, a Chinese idiom for all this madness: 人山人海 (renshan renhai), or literally “people mountain, people sea”. But what if you escape to an actual mountain? Well, here’s a photo doing the rounds on Weibo that shows people queuing for the Yellow Mountain scenic area:
Oh. Well then with all these people at key scenic spots across China (and increasingly overseas), maybe the National Holiday is a nice time to go for a drive in the country eh? Umm….
Ah, Golden Week….
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