A guard sits in front of a Chinese New Year celebration stage in China. (Photo : Reuters)
During Chinese President Xi Jinping's first 2015 domestic inspection tour in January, he returned to the northwestern village of Liangjiahe, in China's Shaanxi Province, with his wife.
The visit allowed the leader to reacquaint himself with the area where he spent seven years as a rural laborer under Chairman Mao Zedong's rule.
As a result of its link to the president's early life, Chinese tourists flocked to the village location during the early part of the Spring Festival holiday to form some kind of bond with their revered leader.
According to a report from Shi Yuxing, an employee of the Liangjiahe museum, at least 100,000 visitors have gone through the village on a yearly basis to observe the former vocational environment of the Chinese president.
However, the domestic tourism trend followed the pattern of previous years as well, with Shanghai standing out in the post-New Year data.
According to the Shanghai Tourism Administration, the city received a record 3.8 million visitors who spent 3.75 billion yuan ($599.6 million) during the week-long festivities. While the former represents an increase of 4.8 percent year on year, the latter revenue total is 4.9 percent greater than last year.
In terms of the 120 tourist attractions located in Shanghai, admissions rose by 6 percent from 2014, while the city's major parks played host to just under four million visitors. The patronage rate at the Shanghai Wildlife Park was up by 39 percent; Century Park's admissions rose by 5 percent to 76,000; and the Happy Valley theme park was able to show a 12.6-percent boost in ticket sales, with 53,300 people passing through the gates.
The Chinese capital's Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven also received a popular level of patronage. Over 50,000 visitors had been registered on the grounds of the Forbidden City location since Feb. 22.
