China Focus: China embraces National Day holiday

The iconic Tian'anmen Square in central Beijing is usually filled with flowers, pot plants and topiary, but on Thursday there were some new installations: hundreds of toilets.

For tourists needing to answer a call of nature, there are now 445 portable toilets in eight locations in the square, as well as 132 assistants to point visitors in the right direction.

"We expect a huge number of tourists during Golden Week, so we have brought in these extra toilets," said Zhang Zhiqiang from the Beijing Environment Sanitation Engineering Group.

The week-long National Day holiday began on Thursday. More than 532 million domestic trips are expected to be made from Oct. 1 to 7, according to the China Tourism Academy. Therefore, a variety of measures are being rolled out to ensure a safe, happy vacation for China's tourists.

In the economic hub of Shanghai, for example, the local government has launched an app on WeChat, the messaging service, which allows visitors to check tourist flow during their visits.

The app provides suggestions for those wanting to go to the city's top tourist destinations, such as opening times, how busy it is and their capacity.

Police have been stationed along the Bund, where a deadly stampede killed 36 on Dec. 31, according to the Beijing Evening News.

"I cannot wait for my trip to Shanghai, I would like to see the Bund and go to Xujiahui District," said Chen Jie, a doctor from Sichuan Province, southwest China. "But I am concerned about the crowds."

The holiday will put pressure on railways.

More than 100 million passengers are expected to travel by rail during the holiday, China Railway Corp. said on Wednesday. A record 13.3 million passengers will take trains on Oct. 1, up 13.4 percent from the same day last year.

In Nanchang, one of the country's busiest transportation hubs, the local railway bureau has added 39 trains, including 31 bullet trains, to ease pressure. The city in east China's Jiangxi Province expects to transport 930,000 passengers by train on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Guangzhou Railway Group Corp., which operates trains in migrant workers-concentrated Guangzhou and Shenzhen, has scheduled 39 extra trains to meet demand.

Many airlines contacted by Xinhua said they had also increased the frequency of flights.

Even with these measures, however, many people still choose to travel by road and many of the major roads will be congested. According to web portal Netease.com, traffic on many sections of the Beijing-Tibet Highway were slow on Thursday morning. In the southern province of Guangdong, it said, 45 traffic accidents have been reported on 22 highways.

At the bustling Beijing South Railway Station, the number of passengers was "way beyond expectation", according to a Xinhua reporter at the scene on Thursday morning.

While many choose to spend the holidays in the country's bustling cities, others prefer something a bit quieter.

Zhang Hongguang, a resident of Jinan City in Shandong Province, east China, went to a rural outpost not far from where he lives to "get close to nature".

"It is cheap to stay in Matao, and the locals are very kind," said Zhang. "I don't understand why people choose to waste their vacations crammed into smelly, crowded trains," Zhang said as he happily picked persimmons with his son.

Homestay accommodation only costs 100 yuan (15.7 U.S. dollars) a night, and visitors can pick fresh fruits grown by the villagers, according to Zhang.

"Here you can truly enjoy the beauty of a vacation," he said. "You don't have to travel thousands of kilometers to get that." Endi