China will hold 20 music festivals across the country during its upcoming May Day holiday, May 1-5, with booking sites expecting the concerts to attract up to 200 million travelers.
May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day and Labor Day in some countries, is an international celebration of Marxism and typically one of the year’s biggest holidays in communist countries.
“Music fans in East China’s Shandong Province will be able to enjoy three music festivals from May 1 to 4, one in the provincial capital Jinan, one in Binzhou, and another in Zibo,” the Chinese state-run Global Times reported on April 18. “[S]ome places like Taiyuan, [located in] North China’s Shanxi Province, and Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, will only have a single music festival each.”
The city of Wuhan — the origin of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic — will host its annual Strawberry Music Festival this May Day holiday after it was forced to move the event online last year due to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities forced Wuhan to endure one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns during the height of its coronavirus outbreak from winter 2019 to spring 2020.
“The music festival will be held outdoors at the Wuhan Garden Expo Park. Several restrictions have been announced such as no tents due to limited space and the large number of people. … The owner of a rental property near the Wuhan Garden Expo Park said that they have seen an increase in bookings for the holiday period,” the CCP mouthpiece relayed.
“Based on leading indicators such as search volume of tourist destinations, flight and hotel bookings, this year’s May Day holiday is expected to be the hottest Golden Week in history, with about 200 million travelers expected,” the Global Times reported Sunday, citing a recent estimation by the CCP newspaper People’s Daily.
“This May holiday we already have … some of the number(s) coming in and we’re looking at record number of travelers in China — probably even double-digit growth from the pre-Covid [Chinese coronavirus] levels,” Trip.com Group Executive Chairman James Liang told CNBC’s ’s Street Signs Asia on April 19.
“In particular, higher-end accommodation such as resorts and short distance travel are expected to see ‘very, very fast growth’ that could actually more than offset the decline in international travel, Liang projected,” according to CNBC.
“The money that people save from buying the international air ticket, people spend on hotels especially high-end hotels and cars, you know, local transportation,” Liang said. “Even though the total transaction amount may not be reaching a record level, but then in terms of number of travelers and in terms of the margins, we’re very optimistic.”