Travelers embrace cultural, natural tourism during Qingming Festival holiday

The three-day Qingming Festival holiday has witnessed a surge in tourism across China, with travelers embracing a diverse range of experiences from natural landscapes to historical sites and cultural experiences.

Many destinations incorporated new technologies and innovative approaches to enhance the visitor experience.

Two Buddhist cave complexes along the ancient Silk Road in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region opened to the public for the first time on Saturday.

The Ya’er Lake Grottoes, part of a UNESCO World Heritage site in the city of Turpan, welcomed visitors following a year of restoration work and digital upgrades.

Formerly serving as a monastery, the grottoes are composed of 22 caves dating back to the fifth century and containing Buddhist murals and inscriptions in multiple languages, including Chinese and Old Uygur.

Visitors can now have a glimpse of the original colors of the faded murals through AR technology.

“I was truly amazed. The restoration work is incredible. The restored murals are so vivid and detailed, bringing these precious cultural relics back to life,” said Yang Shiyu, a tourist from Hubei Province, central China.

Some 40 km away, four caves of the Shengjinkou Grottoes in Turpan also opened to the public on Saturday, set to offer 300 visitor slots per day. The Shengjinkou site has 13 caves dating back to the seventh century, where murals, woodware, pottery, fabrics and paintings on silk have been unearthed.

Meanwhile, the pleasant spring weather drew crowds to Pinglu County in north China’s Shanxi Province to admire the blossoming peach trees. There are also entertaining activities for visitors to relish the atmosphere.

“The thousands of peach trees are very beautiful. There’s drum performance and other activities. I’m so happy to be here,” said Chao Herong, a visitor.

In a scenic spot of east China’s Anhui Province, humanoid robots have stolen the limelight as they were deployed for security patrols. Tourists were seen interacting, shaking hands, and taking photos with them.

“It’s my first time to see robots in a scenic area. It’s very novel to experience the technology. My child has had a great time interacting with the robots,” said Liu Jia, a visitor.

Wuyi Mountain Nature Reserve in Fujian Province, which boasts one of the world’s most significant subtropical forests, welcomed over 32,000 visitors in the first two days of the holiday.

While immersing in the natural scenery of Mount Wuyi, over 12,000 spectators have enjoyed a live performance which turned the natural landscape into a theater stage.

Qingming Festival, which falls on April 4 this year, is a traditional Chinese festival for people to pay tribute to the dead and worship their ancestors. The holiday provides a short break for Chinese citizens as they engage in outdoor activities and sightseeing.

Travelers embrace cultural, natural tourism during Qingming Festival holiday

A Brazilian national who was deported by the United States in January this year recounted the discriminatory and inhumane treatment he encountered during the repatriation in an interview with China Central Television (CCTV).

Jefferson Faustino was among the 88 deported Brazilians sent by a charter flight from the U.S. to Manaus, a city in northern Brazil, on Jan 24.

During dozens of hours of flight, they were handcuffed, shackled, and denied food and bathroom, and they almost lost their lives to an air conditioning fault, according to Faustino.

“They gave us water in very small bottles on the plane. And I couldn’t drink it, because my hands were cuffed to the waist chain. So I had to bend down hard and squash the bottle to spray water into my mouth, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to reach the water at all. Even by doing so, I couldn’t get water. When I squeeze the bottle, the water sprayed out and soaked me all over. In the 48 hours of repatriation, they distributed food only one time. It was a spoiled sandwich. The sandwich they gave turned purplish color. I was starving. What could I do? I had to eat,” Faustino said.

“In the 48 hours of repatriation, they distributed food only one time. It was a spoiled sandwich. The sandwich they gave me was purple. I was starving. What could I do? I had to eat,” he added.

Meanwhile, the American crew enjoyed fresh food and water, Faustino told CCTV.

“No, they had very good food. Every meal, they went over there to heat up box lunches and drink water. The cabin cabinets were full of lunch boxes, full of food, but they didn’t give us that food,” he said.

The Brazilian deportees protested the unfair treatment and asked for the food and water, but they were not given a response, because of the language barrier, Faustino recalled.

“Yes, we asked. We spoke loudly to them, but the crew didn’t speak Portuguese or Spanish, only English. It’s a humiliation to us the Brazilians, because we didn’t have food and couldn’t use the bathroom. The children were crying,” he said.

After the plane arrived in Manaus, the air conditioning system broke down and the crew got off the plane, leaving the deportees suffocating in the enclosure.

“People couldn’t breathe. The cabin was out of air. I managed to open an emergency exit door and shouted to the police: ‘Help! Help! Help!’ I yelled for help, asking them to come and save us, because I thought I was dying, I was dying,” Faustino said.

The Brazilian government deemed this treatment “degrading” and “unacceptable”, with the country’s foreign ministry summoning the charge d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy to request an explanation over the issue on Jan 26.

“The U.S. government should be held accountable. Why didn’t they train these people responsible for transporting deportees. Since the Trump administration came to power, it has created conflicts in American society and adopted policies that are completely against democracy and public opinion, disrupting relations between the U.S. and its economic and political partners,” said Rinaldo Leal, a Brazilian lawyer.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed on his inauguration day an executive order that called for mass deportations of undocumented migrants. Since then, raids and deportations of undocumented migrants, especially those from Latin America, have continued to ramp up.

Brazilian deportee recounts inhumane treatment during flight from US