Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum attracted nearly 200,000 visits by local and foreign tourists in the first three days of the Chinese Lunar New Year starting Feb. 8, mausoleum sources said on Thursday, Feb. 11, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
The mausoleum was built in honor of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Kuomintang Party and a forerunner of China's anti-feudalism revolution, and was completed in 1929 in Nanjing City, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.
"I'm here because I'm interested in modern and contemporary Chinese history but I didn't expect to see so many people," Lucas, a Brazilian tourist, was quoted as saying.
Since this year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference last year decided to hold a commemoration on Nov. 12 this year, the report said.
"I'm glad to be here after visiting the Sun Yat-sen memorial hall in Taiwan," a Taiwan businessman who visited the mausoleum said. "I'm looking forward to the commemorations on both sides of the Taiwan Strait."
Born in 1866, Dr. Sun is known to the Chinese as a "great revolutionary and statesman" for his leading role during the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the imperial Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and put an end to more than 2,000 years of feudal rule. He died in 1925.
Other places in China also reported an upsurge in tourist visits. In Shanghai, for instance, the number of tourists who visited the city over the weeklong Spring Festival holiday rose by 4.8 percent year-on-year to 3.8 million, according to the city's tourism authority, Shanghai Daily reported.
The Shanghai Tourism Administration said tourist revenue in the period gained 4.9 percent from last year to 3.75 billion yuan ($599.6 million).
The administration also monitored the admissions at the 120 tourist attractions and recorded an increase of 6 percent from last year to more than 3.5 million, while the city's major parks welcomed 3.7 million visitors.