China Local News

Holiday Chaos: China’s Scenic Areas Overcrowded and Dangerous

As millions of people are flocking to China’s most scenic areas during the national holiday, some spots are so chaotic and packed that they form a potential safety hazard to visitors.

Published

8 years ago

October 2, 2017

Manya Koetse

Millions of Chinese use the National Holiday period to go out and visit some of China’s most scenic spots. But some areas are so crowded and unorganized that the situation is perilous. On Weibo, people complain about the security hazards of China’s overcrowded tourist attractions.

As people across China are celebrating the Golden Week holiday, the country’s scenic spots are packed with tourists.

Huge crowds formed a potential safety hazard at the Seven Small Arches (Xiaoqikong) scenic area in Libo County, Guizhou (image via Weibo).

This year, many people on Weibo are especially complaining about the situation at the Seven Small Arches (Xiaoqikong) scenic area in Libo County, Guizhou.

On Sunday, Pear Video reported on Weibo that the roads leading to the sightseeing spot were so jammed that some foreign tourists decided to get out their car to play a game of frisbee on the expressway.

On Monday, the situation seemed even worse, as some Weibo netizens posted that the extreme crowds in the area led to people being stuck for over three hours in the heat, with no available food or water, and no people to manage the situation.

Not just the roads to the area were jammed, people were also stuck within the area waiting for buses – sometimes for two to three hours, according to visitors’ reports.

“Such a chaos!” some visitors wrote online: “And no staff members to maintain order, no mechanisms to respond to emergency situations.”

One netizen (@小蜗牛牛儿) posted a that a SWAT team eventually came to the scene to check on the situation.

“First I drive 3 hours to Libo, then it still takes me 3 hours to actually reach the scenic spot, then I catch a glimpse of the Seven Small Arches and the day was gone like this. You really don’t control this well, you shouldn’t let in so many people,” one person complained on Weibo.

“Of all the scenic attractions I’ve ever visited, the Seven Small Arches left the worst impression on me,” netizen (@飞骑引雕弓2016) said: “We waited for two hours on the rocks in the heat before we could get on the bus, people are getting heatstroke this way!”

“This is the first time I experienced a traffic jam within a scenic spot!” another commenter, who also visited the area on Monday, wrote on Weibo.

“The Seven Small Arches area is receiving too many visitors, creating huge congestion. People are currently fighting to get on the bus,” another visitor wrote, warning local authorities about the potentially hazardous situation.

China’s scenic spots yearly attract attention for becoming too crowded during the national holiday. During these days, places such as the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and many other tourist attractions are so crowded that people can hardly move.

The Seven Small Arches Xiaoqikong scenic spot covers an area of 10 square kilometers, and is known for its karst forest, beautiful scenery, and numerous waterfalls.

A young woman from Sichuan posted on social media: “I understand that there are a lot of people here. But it’s past six o’clock and we’ve been waiting for over an hour for the tour bus to pick us up and it hasn’t come. So many people here and it’s soon getting dark, we’re over ten kilometers away from the exit and cannot walk so far. We don’t have food and it’s hot. Nobody is answering on the complaint line, and still, the entrance ticket to the park is so expensive!”

On Monday night, other visitors posted that they had been waiting for over four hours in the dark for a bus to pick them up from the scene.

“I will never come back here,” they wrote.

By Manya Koetse
Follow @whatsonweibo

Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us.

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Manya Koetse

Manya is the founder and editor-in-chief of What's on Weibo, offering independent analysis of social trends, online media, and digital culture in China for over a decade. Subscribe to gain access to content, including the Weibo Watch newsletter, which provides deeper insights into the China trends that matter. More about Manya at manyakoetse.com or follow on X.

1 Comment

Richard Smith

November 19, 2017 at 12:24 am

I’ve just returned from researching tourism in some of China’s best known tourist sites — Hua Shan, Jiangjiashie, Guilin, the Forbidden City, Great Wall, Suzhou, Hangzhou and others. China has many beautiful natural features that have not yet been destroyed by overdevelopment, many beautiful parks and gardens, and a still a few old villages and cities. But they’re all being overwhelmed by way too many people and incessant overdevelopment. A couple of weeks ago a Chinese friend and I visited Yu Garden in Shanghai. He grew up in Shanghai and used to go there on Saturday mornings as a child in the 1950s and 60s with his grandfather. They would spend a couple of hours in near solitude, contemplating the beauty of the rocks, lakes and nature. The garden was ideal for meditation and in those days one could do that. But today even on a regular week day, not a holiday, the place is mobbed with masses of Chinese tourists posing for selfies every ten steps. Meditation or even just enjoying nature is the last thing one can do there. The same can be said with nearly every other tourist site i visited. A visit to tourist sites really brings home the fact that China is massively overpopulated. Moreover, what with “market reform” every site charges admission. Not cheap either. Even to visit a dirty public beach in Guilin you have to buy a ticket. So everywhere you go there are “cattle pens” to regulate long queues of people buying tickets, getting on buses or cable cars up the mountains and so on. Then there is all the trashy commercialism, the KFC junk food, etc. etc. Of course these problems are not limited to China. I live in the middle of New York City. This place is nothing if not massively overpopulated. Go the the Eiffel Tower or Venice or any tourist site in Europe and many in the U.S. The world doesn’t need a one-child policy. It needs a NO-child policy for a few generations to get the human population back down so some reasonable sustainable level so that we don’t completely destroy the last of the natural world. I certainly don’t support compulsory population reduction but I see no reason why, with adequate social security arrangements, we can’t provide economic and other incentives to people to have just one or even forego having children so future generations can live in a sustainable, harmonious, beautiful world instead of an overpopulated, market-driven world verging on ecological collapse.

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China Local News

Six Chinese Students Dead After Falling Into Flotation Tank During Mine Visit

After six students drowned in a mine tank, social media users question safety precautions and media framing.

Published

4 months ago

July 25, 2025

Manya Koetse

🔥 Quick Take: Trending in China
This is a brief update from our curated roundup of what’s trending in China this week. A version of this story also appears in the Weibo Watch newsletter. Subscribe to stay in the loop.

The tragic death of six Chinese students during a visit to the Wunugetushan Copper-Molybdenum Mine (乌努格吐山铜钼矿) in Inner Mongolia has been trending on Chinese social media this week.

The students, who study mineral processing engineering at the School of Resources & Civil Engineering Northeastern University (东北大学), visited the site as part of their studies on Wednesday, July 23.

The facility, which operates under the state-owned China National Gold Group Corporation (中国黄金集团), includes a mineral processing plant where ore is crushed and processed using flotation cells to separate copper and molybdenum concentrate from waste rock.

The students were standing on a metal grate above a deep industrial tank used for mineral processing. The grate then suddenly collapsed, and they fell into the flotation tank, which was filled with mineral slurry (see this video to better understand the situation).

The tank was deep, and once inside, the slurry made it impossible to swim.

By the time the students were taken out of the tank, they had already drowned. They were all aged between 20 and 22. One of their teachers was injured in the incident.

According to Sohu News, citing a preliminary accident investigation report, the direct cause of the incident was a pre-existing crack in the grate above the tank, which caused the entire panel to flip and fall off. The grates had been replaced in February but were not properly tested. The site also lacked warning signs about load capacity and reportedly did not restrict the number of people allowed to stand on it.

Three people responsible for safety measures at the site, including the deputy general manager, have now been placed under criminal detention.

Besides the many questions surfacing online about how such a gruesome accident could have occurred, there is also criticism of how the media has reported on the incident. Some outlets mentioned that the 45 other intern students—presumably also present during the visit—were “emotionally stable,” and that the teacher who was injured was in a “good mental state.”

One blogger criticized these phrases, which are often used in media reports following similar incidents. While they appear to describe the psychological condition of survivors or bystanders, the author argued that they are more political than psychological: their real function is to signal to readers that—despite the loss of life—the situation remains under control.

After the online criticism, the Weibo hashtag “45 Intern Students from Northeastern University Are Emotionally Stable” (#东北大学45名实习学生情绪平稳#) has since been taken offline.

At the time of writing, the official website of Northeastern University has been changed to black and white.

By Manya Koetse

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China Local News

The Liaoyang Restaurant Fire That Killed 22 People

Published

7 months ago

April 29, 2025

Manya Koetse

🔥 Quick Take: Trending in China – Week 18
This is a brief update from our curated roundup of what’s trending in China this week. A version of this story also appears in the Weibo Watch newsletter. Subscribe to stay in the loop.

An enormous fire that happened at a restaurant in Liaoning’s Liaoyang on the afternoon of April 29 (see video) has gone top trending on Chinese social media, mainly due to the fact that it caused so many fatalities.

By 7pm, Chinese official media reported that the fire, which happened at 12:25 in the city’s Baita district, had killed 22 people. Three people were injured.

The fire started on the second floor of the restaurant Sanli Chuniang (三里厨娘/Sanli Chef’s Daughter) on Minzhu Road (民主路) and quickly spread throughout the entire two-story brick-concrete structure, which covers an area of about 260 square meters. The windy weather also played a part in how quickly the fire spread. The fire broke out around lunchtime, when there were many customers.

The restaurant before and after the fire.

Some sources on Xiaohongshu report that, according to witnesses, toxic smoke filled the entire building in less than five minutes. The thick smoke, small spaces inside the two-story building, and limited escape routes — some of which were allegedly blocked — all contributed to the high number of fatalities. Some victims were reportedly just ten meters away from the exit, yet still failed to escape.

According to Caixin, the restaurant’s second floor had several private rooms without windows.

To make matters worse, some nearby vehicles were not moved in time, hindering the rescue operations.

Sanli Chuniang was a locally popular restaurant serving various Chinese dishes, snacks, and dumplings. It was in business since 2016.

On social media, many commenters are expressing shock and sadness over the deadly fire. They also want answers into why there seemed to have been little to no fire safety precautions at the establishment.

The last time a restaurant fire with many fatalities made major headlines in China was in 2023, when a gas explosion inside a BBQ restaurant in Yinchuan resulted in 31 deaths. Nine people, including the restaurant owner, were later arrested in connection with the fire and the lack of safety precautions.

Some reports on the Liaoyang restaurant fire have now been removed, but it appears that the restaurant had been operating illegally since 2023 and that its fire safety inspections were not up to date.

Guancha reported that while the cause of the fire is still under investigation, the restaurant owner has been taken into custody.

🔄 Update 1: Chinese leader Xi Jinping issued a statement regarding the devastating fire, calling on local authorities to hold those responsible accountable and to properly handle matters related to the victims and console their families.

Premier Li Qiang also emphasized that local authorities across China should screen for fire hazards and strengthen safety measures to prevent such major accidents from occurring.

🔄 Update 2: Preliminary investigations have ruled out arson or gas leakage as the cause of the fire. The specific cause of the incident is still under investigation, focusing on leftover cigarette butts that might have started the fire or possible electrical faults. The restaurant’s furniture and interior materials were highly flammable, and strong winds outside caused the fire to spread quickly and block the exits. This made it difficult for those trapped inside to escape. Most victims died from asphyxiation after inhaling large amounts of toxic smoke in a short time.

As definite results have not yet been issued at the time of writing (May 6), some netizens are wondering: “When can we expect to hear more?”

By Manya Koetse

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