Crowds of tourists sweep the Great Wall of China amid the...

Pictures from last weekend show the iconic Beijing landmark crowded with huge crowds sticking together along the wall’s winding path.

Although most of the visitors stick to wearing face masks, a number of them, including young children, have pulled their masks up to their chins, and it appears that a few others have left their masks at all.

The “Golden Week” holiday, which is the national holiday in China that lasts for eight days, is one of the busiest annual travel seasons in China, and is a major test for the country as it emerges from the Coronavirus pandemic crisis.

And a Chinese official said the numbers of HIV cases had remained low since spring.

There were a few outbreaks of the virus, including a cluster in Beijing last June, but they were met with immediate mass testing and lockdown measures, and the outbreaks were contained within a few weeks.

With zero local transmission cases, residents flocked to bus stations, airports, and transportation centers to travel around the country to spend the holiday, which began on the first of October. Attractions that offer free or discount tickets.

Local authorities competed with each other to attract tourists, as regional and municipal governments issued travel vouchers and tickets for free or reduced price to enter tourist attractions.

The most popular section of the Great Wall of China, the Badaling section, was reopened at the end of last March, albeit with new restrictions such as requiring visitors to book tickets in advance.

In a notice issued on September 29, the Badaling Special Administrative Region office, the government agency that runs the Great Wall of China, stressed that visitors should continue to follow the restrictions during the holiday season.

These restrictions include conducting social distancing by keeping a distance of one meter between each other.

The notice stated: “Assembly is strictly prohibited.”

The previous guidelines on the Great Wall of China website noted the necessity of wearing face masks for the entire duration of the visit, and urged tourists to “comply with the guidelines and management of the museum staff.”

None of these restrictions were closely followed this week, as tourists crowded together on the path of the wall.

Usually, the Great Wall of China attracts more than 10 million people every year.

Badaling, which is known to be crowded with domestic and international tourists, is so popular that officials set a visitor limit of 65,000 visitors per day as of June last year.

When the department reopened last March, the new restrictions limited the number of daily visitors to 30% of its usual capacity.

Ahead of the Golden Week celebrations, the Chinese authorities have raised this cap to 75% of normal capacity, meaning a daily capacity of 48,750 visitors.

On October 3, tickets for the Badaling section were sold out entirely in the early morning, according to the state-run Chinese news agency Xinhua.

The Golden Week holiday has traditionally seen middle-class Chinese people travel abroad in large numbers.

But this year’s circumstances, from visa restrictions, quarantine requirements, a shortage of international flights, and the continuing threat of “Covid-19” all mean that Chinese travelers are looking for travel experiences locally instead.

And in just the first four days of the holiday, 425 million domestic tourism trips were made in China, generating more than $ 45 billion in tourism revenue, according to data from the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism.