More road, water journeys made during National Day holiday

Both boat and road travel proved popular with people traveling during the National Day holiday, with a large number of travelers opting for self-drive tours, official data revealed Monday.

There were more than 662 million journeys made by road and water during the "Golden Week" national holiday ending on October 7, representing an increase of 1.7 percent from last year, said the Ministry of Transport (MOT).

The growth rate this year was faster than the 1 percent rate registered in 2015, evidence that Chinese are increasingly willing to spend on tourism and leisure activities on the back of their rising purchasing power.

Breakdown numbers showed that 649 million journeys were made by road in the Golden Week, an increase of 1.5 percent from the prior year, and 13.2 million passengers chose to travel by boat, up 7.7 percent from a year earlier, said the MOT.

Self-drive tours have become a popular way to vacation in China, as 284 million journeys were made by vehicles using toll roads across the nation, a solid gain of 7.8 percent from the previous year. Almost 84 percent of these journeys were self-drive tours, official data showed.

On the same note, 108.34 million passengers made train journeys from September 28 to October 7, a record high, the China Railway Corporation announced Saturday.

China's National Day falls on October 1, and the Golden Week was made a national holiday from 1999. Endi