(LI SHIGONG)

This year, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holiday allowed many Chinese to enjoy an eight-day holiday in early October. Good weather conditions and the suspension of tolls on expressways made this Golden Week (September 30-October 7) a good opportunity to travel. However, the arrival of so many holiday revelers posed a serious challenge to some iconic places. The heavy crowds made it difficult for tourists to enjoy their destinations.

Meanwhile, China saw 68,422 traffic accidents during the holiday, leading to the death of 794 people, according to the Ministry of Public Security. People begin to doubt the Golden Week: Is it necessary to have a national weeklong holiday? Are there any other ways to make the holiday more enjoyable? The following are excerpts of some opinions.

Guo Bensheng (www.xinhuanet.com): Today, Chinese people are paying more attention to the quality of leisure, and so the weeklong National Day holiday is a bigger topic of discussion than it was a decade ago. Many people are questioning whether we need such a busy Golden Week. The long holiday can't be perfect in every aspect. Nevertheless, on the whole, the Golden Week has brought many benefits—happy family reunions, travels, and relaxation. There are also many negatives during the weeklong holiday, and Chinese people should learn how to cope.

In order to make the trips during the holiday more comfortable, the government should gradually improve its services, while tourists should also learn to improve their behavior at public places. Efforts by both sides are crucial for the overall improvement of the quality of the Golden Week.

If there were more tourism programs and choices, people would not have to crowd together in these few spots. Although consumption rose during the Golden Week and boosted the economy to some extent, businesses' overreliance on holiday deals will create problems in the long run.

The Golden Week offers a very helpful lesson. As their lives improve, people have higher expectations when traveling. Thus, golden week is an opportunity and also a challenge to many businesses. The era of leisure tourism requires every tourist to behave well, so that everyone's experience will be positive. Leisure consumption is promoting a sunrise industry, so we should try to avoid damaging this new business due to shortsighted behavior.

Mao Jianguo (www.people.com.cn): Car users today are familiar with traffic jams. It is unavoidable, especially during a weeklong holiday when tolls are suspended. This was the first time that expressways have been free for use. It's impossible for the traffic department to anticipate all problems that might crop up due to the suspension of tolls. Thus, we should not deny the positive side of free use of expressways during the holidays.

This is a good policy that benefits ordinary people. Due to this practice, traffic flows sharply increased, which is to be expected. It's unwise to deny this policy just because of the crowded roads. If the roads can take more cars; if traffic problems can be discovered timely and solved immediately; if every tourist knows how to protect the environment on their trips; and if drivers all know how to behave properly on the roads, then even if the free policy is extended to more areas, no traffic jams will happen so easily. More importantly, if people can learn how to tolerate traffic jams and remain mentally at ease, then heavy traffic will not be such a problem.

Wang Yong (Global Times): For most Chinese, traveling during the Golden Week is a necessity. There is no second holiday that can provide them with so many days off for traveling.

Some argue that we should learn from the international experience, such as the paid annual leave system. Obviously, this is not suitable for China's current situation. China has a huge population, most of which has just gotten out of poverty. Thus, the Chinese' perspective of holidays and holiday consumption is quite different from that of other peoples.

When the weeklong May Day holiday was cancelled, one reason was to promote paid annual leave. However, we were overly optimistic. Each year, only 30 percent of the country' workforce have access to this benefit, and thus the remaining 70 percent can only travel at the same time during the legal holiday.

In reality, employees sometimes can't even get legal overtime pay, let alone paid annual leave. Therefore, at the current stage, the compulsory weeklong National Day holiday is more useful than the unattainable paid annual leave.

Of course, the improvement of the annual paid leave system is the final goal. China has far fewer legal holidays than Western countries, so before the paid annual leave system is fully put into place, we need to restore the weeklong May Day holiday as well. What's more, another Golden Week holiday might be created in the summer.