Road to nowhere is route to despair

Too few holidays

Why were the roads so crowded? The lack of holidays in China might be to blame. Employees in China, Canada, the Philippines and the United States have the least generous holiday entitlement among statutory employees in 62 countries and regions surveyed for a 2011 report by Mercer, a global human resources consultancy.

Chinese employees are entitled to one paid five-day vacation if they have worked for one to 10 years. Those who have worked for 10 to 20 years are allocated 10 days of paid vacation. That low allocation often means that people are desperate to make full use of their time off.

China was ranked 59 in the Mercer list, just ahead of Thailand, the Philippines and the US. By contrast, workers in the UK enjoy 28 days of statutory leave per annum, while those in Poland get 26 days, according to the Mercer report.

Poor highway design and changes to the pattern and number of holidays are also to blame. Zhang Lingyun, vice-dean of the Tourism Institute at Beijing Union University, said that many years ago he predicted that the roads would become a major mode of travel, but the highway administration bureaus failed to anticipate the high level of demand and so the roads were not designed to accommodate such high traffic volumes.

"Those who travel by car can be flexible in their plans. That makes it extremely difficult for tourist attractions to estimate and control the volume of visitors during the holiday," he said.

In 2008, the seven-day Labor Day holiday was replaced with four shorter breaks, meaning that Chinese workers now have only two seven-day holidays each year, the National Day holiday and Chinese New Year.

As New Year is traditionally a time for family reunions, people naturally use the National Day holiday to undertake trips lasting longer than two or three days.

"It was a bad decision to replace the Labor Day holiday with shorter holidays," said Zhang. "May is a very good season for traveling, but New Year is not, because of family traditions and the cold weather. So there's only one option left for sightseeing - the National Day holiday."

With the Labor Day holiday trimmed to just three days, people are forced to visit major tourist attractions during peak season. Many parks and scenic areas - even those where the views and facilities are not very good - take the opportunity to raise the prices of tickets, food and accommodation, he added.

"Tourist attraction managers only care about profits. They are happy to see people rushing to them, as long as that doesn't cause any accidents," said Zhang. "However, we can't blame them because this is a once-in-a-year opportunity to make big money."

Contact the reporters at jiangxueqing@chinadaily.com.cn

and huyongqi@chinadaily.com.cn

Wu Wencong, Peng Yining, Tang Yue and Zhang Yuchen contributed to this story.