Hordes of tourists are flocking to this Chinese capital as China is celebrating the week-long National Holiday season, and new attractions are the most visited places.

Friday's Beijing Times said, quoting a bullet released by the municipal bureau of tourism, 21 key scenic zones in Beijing had 920,000 tourist arrivals on Thursday, a year-on-year rise of 61.9 percent.

New attractions, such as venues of Olympic Games, had the most number of visitors. The central district of the Olympic Park, home to the Birds' Nest and Water Cube, which was opened to the public as of Monday, had 354,000 tourists on Wednesday and 350,000 ending 3:00 PM on Thursday, according to statistics released by the Office of the Beijing Municipal Leading Group for Holiday Tourism Work, which monitored 21 key sites,

Another new attraction, Qianmen Street, which is one of Beijing's oldest commercial areas that was reopened to the public on August 7 after a massive refurbishment lasting over one year, had 990,000 tourist arrivals in the past four days of the National Holiday Season, including 300,000 on Wednesday and 310,000 on Thursday.

Other conventional well-known tourist sites, such as the Forbidden City, the Beijing Zoo, the section of the Great Wall at Badaling, a UNESCO World Heritage site, all had more visitors than capacity.

On Thursday, the Forbidden City hosted 120,000 visitors, a year-on-year rise of 140 percent, and 97,000 for the section of the Great Wall at Badaling, up 55 percent, and 92,000 for the Summer Palace, up 67 percent, and 65,000 for the Temple of Heaven, up 76.5 percent, according to the bullet released by the municipal bureau of tourism.

The National Holiday, which marks the 1949 founding of the People's Republic of China, started on Monday and will end on Sunday.

(Xinhua News Agency October 5, 2008)