The airport in the city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province, handled a total of 800 flights during the recent Dragon Boat Festival, June 20 – 22, and around 103,000 passengers, Taiping International Airport officials announced on June 23, noting that this was an increase of more than 19.2 percent year-on-year in flights and 27.2 percent in passengers.

Because the holiday is only three days, many people prefer to travel by air, explained a clerk at the airport, with statistics showing that locals prefer popular cities with tourism resources as destinations, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming, Xi’an, and Hangzhou, or coastal cities like Xiamen, Fujian province, and Qingdao, Yantai, and Weihai, in Shandong province.

The passengers going to Beijing, Kunming, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Qingdao, Yantai, Weihai and Hailar, in Inner Mongolia, accounted for 85 percent. At the same time, many tourists from southern cities, such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Chongqing, and Chengdu, and Wuhan in Central China, decided to visit Harbin, which is thought to be a cool, pleasant summer resort. The number of visitors saw a growth of about 20 percent year-on-year.

Flights to Jamusi, Heihe, Jixi, and Jiagedaqi accounted for more than 80 percent of all the air routes inside the province, with the flight from Harbin to Mohe, its northernmost point, proving the most popular.