As I mentioned in a previous post, China is a beautiful country, there are so many interesting and wonderful places to visit. But it can also be exceptionally crowded. With a population of around 1.4 billion, it’s easy to see how!
Many Chinese people work for seven days a week and are only able to take the national holidays off work (eg. Spring Festival, National Day and so on.) These festivals will be the only chance they have to travel, so people will crowd onto public transport and visit relatives or scenic spots in China. I have experienced travelling during these times, because our university holidays coincide with the Chinese national holidays. Yay! This photo is an example of crowded public transport (people are queuing up to have their ID cards and bags checked before getting on board a ferry. They do the same ID and bag checking procedure for the trains too.)
Luckily for me, I live in the most populated province in China (Henan), so I think I get to enjoy even greater crowds when I travel! For example, last summer I went to Yuntai mountain, on one lovely weekend with two friends, only to find that everyone else in the province had had the same idea! The weather was really hot (around 38 degrees C) and I’m sure the rather large number of people on these mountain passes didn’t help. Despite the crowds, we really enjoyed our trip -although you do have to get used to being pushed rather a lot. As I have mentioned in a previous post, Chinese people are lovely and friendly, although they seem to forget this on public transport and on crowded mountain paths, where they will push and shove to get ahead of as many people as they can!
Oh, only in China!
Cassie Borodenko 
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