Holiday traffic renews calls for paid leave

A dog is brought outside from a car in a traffic jam on a highway on Oct 7, the last day of the National Day holiday. Provided to China Daily

After a pleasant trip to a nature reserve in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Meng Xuejing started driving back to Beijing on Monday morning, thinking about her supper at home.

Ten hours later, she was still on the road, exhausted and hungry.

"The journey was supposed to take five to six hours," the 35-year-old accountant says.

Meng's experience was far from the only tale of traffic woe among holidaymaking families who set out by car during the weeklong National Day break, which ended on Oct 7. Photos circulating on social media showed expressways basically transformed into parking lots.

Once again, the Chinese fell foul of the fact that the country tends to indulge in tourism en masse during national holidays. Lack of paid annual leave makes it hard to travel at off-peak times of the year.

According to transport authorities, more than 740 million people - or half of China's population - traveled during the holiday, 640 million of them by road. Demand for travel is only going to rise, as the population becomes more affluent and mobile.

This was Meng's first long-distance trip in her first car, crammed with her parents, her husband and son.

"When my parents were young, our family didn't have enough money to travel," she says.

"So after I bought the car, I told them we would go to as many places as possible."

More than 300 million Chinese have driving licenses, making them the largest driver group in the world.

Highway tolls are waived for passenger vehicles during long holidays, but that isn't the reason Meng chose to travel.