Tourists flock to southwestern Yunnan to avoid heat waves

Visitors take sightseeing mini trains to enjoy lotus flowers at Longde Lake in Jinghong City of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province, July 2, 2022.Photo:Xinhua

With scorching heat waves returning to China, many tourists are rushing to Southwest China's Yunnan Province to keep cool, with travel platform data showing that bookings for air tickets in July surged by nearly 100 percent month-on-month.

The country's national observatory on Sunday continued to issue an orange alert for high temperatures as intense heat linger in many regions of the country.

During daylight hours on Monday, temperatures in some regions of northwestern Xinjiang and eastern Zhejiang and Fujian provinces could surpass 40 degrees Celsius, the National Meteorological Center (NMC) said.

Fu Jiaolan, chief weather forecaster at the NMC, forecast that extreme hot weather would persist for about seven to nine days in regions including areas to the south of the Yangtze River, parts of northwestern Xinjiang and northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to a report published on the website of the China Meteorological Administration on Friday.

During the coming week, the temperatures in areas including Jiangsu, Shanghai and Xinjiang may approach or hit new record highs, she said.

To avoid the summer heat, Chinese tourists are rushing to take holidays in Southwest China. According to data domestic travel platform Qunar sent to the Global Times on Saturday, air ticket bookings to Yunnan Province for the summer holiday has surpassed the same period in 2019, while bookings for hotels in the province since July grew nearly 50 percent compared with the same period in 2019.

It said that bookings for air tickets to Yunnan Province grew nearly 100 percent month-on-month to date, while the number for flights to Lijiang, Yunnan, increased by 140 percent month-on-month.

In addition, many tourists are also flocking to indoor skiing venues to keep cool. Qunar data showed that the number of searches for indoor skiing on the platform jumped 470 percent month-on-month as of Thursday, and bookings for relevant products increased by 268 percent month-on-month.