Chinese tourists lost in their own backyard

BEIJING, May 9 (Reuters) More than 3,000 local tourists got lost in the crowds on Beijing's vast Tiananmen Square over the week-long May Day public holiday, a newspaper said today.

Mobile police units set up on the square, south of the Forbidden City, handled 3,568 missing person cases, with 1,661 made on May Day alone, the Beijing News said.

According to police equipped with loudspeakers and able to broadcast missing person messages in multiple dialects, 70 per cent of those temporarily lost were adults.

Some people lacked travelling experience, and some older people and children couldn't remember their relatives' phone numbers, the Beijing News quoted Wang, a policeman, as saying.

Several million people visited Beijing during the May Golden Week -- a national holiday in which 120 million trips were taken across the country, the China Daily said yesterday.

China's week-long May Day, Lunar New Year and National Day holidays -- established in 1999 to stimulate spending -- spur one of the world's biggest human migrations as millions travel home, to tourist sites and increasingly, abroad.

But despite burgeoning travel-related revenues -- May Golden Week generating a record 40 billion yuan alone -- official media have raised concerns about frequent traffic accidents and the strain on tourist infrastructure and heritage sites.

Frustrated domestic tourists have dubbed the vacation ''Golden Porridge'' -- a play on words referring to the hot and sticky swarm of people flooding tourist spots and public transport.

REUTERS DKS RN1232