wuhan china golden week

Wuhan, China Pulls Nearly 19 Million Tourists During Golden Week

china golden week wuhan
image: Ni Hao China/ Facebook

Wuhan, China is known around the globe as the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak that began last year in one of the city’s wet markets. While the city itself certainly garnered much attention through this year’s ongoing pandemic, it’s starting to make a comeback. More than 635 million people travelled within China over the Golden Week, which takes place annually in October. This year, Wuhan hosted nearly 19 million tourists over the holiday effectively bringing life and colour back to the once vacant streets. While less than the 782 million who travelled during 2019’s Golden Week, it’s still seen as a rebound for China given this year’s difficult circumstances.

Wuhan China Pulls 19 Million Tourists During Golden Week Holidays

image: Shine/Facebook

Golden Week commemorates the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This year it fell in conjunction with the Mid Autumn Festival which also took off on October 1. It’s typically the biggest week for tourism in China as people from all corners of the country criss-cross to visit family and loved ones. Due to complicated border closures and government restrictions, many Chinese families stayed domestic instead of vying for popular destinations such as South Korea and Japan. This gave way to a remarkable boost to the nation’s economy. The holidays wound up generating nearly half a billion yuan (68 billion USD) in revenue.

This level of mass movement, even domestically, is practically unheard of throughout most of the rest of the world. Many countries are still struggling to control the virus with places like the United States having over 8 million cases and Brazil trailing close behind. Melbourne, Australia remains on lockdown – the most prolonged and most strict in the world. Europe is also having great difficulty with countries such as France slipping back into a state of emergency. At this time, China is reported to have just 258 cases in its population of 1.4 billion.

Wuhan – A Place of History and Culture

Wuhan is home to some of China’s most vibrant culture, food and art scenes with over 3,500 years of history. The Wuhan Art Gallery is one of the best in the nation and full of stunning Chinese watercolour paintings. Once a British colonial settlement and trading port, the city is full of foreign and domestic influence at every turn. Wuhan was also home to the famous Wuchang Uprising which later led to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. For being one of China’s most populous cities, there’s quite a bit of green space, too.

wuhan china golden week
image: Ni Hao China/Facebook

Centrally located with a world-class train station, it’s also ideal for day trips to nearby attractions. Namely,  Three Gorges Dam and Wudang Mountain. Over the holidays the ancient city hosted National Celebrations all over. The largest of which took place in The Yellow Tower and the Yangtze River Bridge. China’s ambitious celebrations of the holidays have been noted worldwide. Hopefully, they’ll go on to be something the rest of the world can look forward to once the virus has been contained.

Melanie Hamilton

Melanie is an avid traveller with a passion for history and global foods. She is currently based in Tbilisi, Georgia where most of her time is occupied with qvevri wine and Soviet history. Having do-si-do'd her way across Europe and Latin America, she's enjoyed some of the world's most exciting places firsthand and can't wait to tell you about them.

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