A three-day break around the Dragon Boat Festival allows the Chinese people not only the pleasure of enjoying zongzi, a traditional glutinous rice pyramid-shaped dumpling with varied fillings wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves, but also more options to plan their vacations.

They had the first Dragon Boat Festival holiday from June 7 to 9, and statistics from food companies in Beijing indicated an average increase of 20 to 30 percent in zongzi production and sales during the holiday.

And tourists swarmed into holiday resorts in suburban Beijing. On the day the Dragon Boat Festival fell, which was June 8 this year, Beijing Wildlife Park alone hosted 1,200 tourists, according to Li Gang, a ticket taker at the park, in contrast to several dozen tourists they had last year during the festival.

According to the China Youth Travel Agency (CYTA), more people chose to go out for a jaunt during this three-day holiday than the previous Pure Brightness Festival and Labor Day holidays.

The State Council changed China's golden week holiday system last November. It shortened the three-day Labor Day holiday to a one-day vacation, and created three single-day holidays that fall on traditional Chinese festivals, the Pure Brightness Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Together with the single-day break on the New Year's Day, the Chinese people have five three-day vacations and two seven-day vacations (including the weekends) during the National Day holiday and the Spring Festival holiday starting this year.

The CYTA received a few tourists during the Pure Brightness Festival and saw a decrease in the number of tourists during the Labor Day holiday that shrank from seven days to three days this year, said Wu Yan, a CYTA employee.

"The growth in the number of tourists we hosted during the three-day Dragon Boat Festival break indicated that people are getting used to enjoying shorter vacations," said Wu.

Essence of vacation

"The holiday was exhausting when we had to rush from one sightseeing spot to another on a tight schedule during the three golden week holidays every year," said Zhang Yu, a Beijinger working for Philips Electronics. "I prefer to visit one place for each of these smaller breaks. "

He traveled to Jinan and Qufu in Shandong Province and stayed there for two whole days this festival. Jinan, capital of Shangdong, is famous for springs, and Qufu is eminent for being the hometown of Confucius (551-479 B.C.), the celebrated thinker, philosopher and educator in ancient China.