Oct. 4 - As China's week-long National Day vacation started from Sunday this year, Beijing's sanitation workers have been kept even busier to sweep the Tian'anmen Square which received nearly three million visitors over the past two days.
The municipal sanitation department has sent 400 sanitation workers to clean the square around the clock. They have cleared away nearly 80 tons of rubbish left by the tourists during the past two days.
"There were 1.45 million people visiting the Square respectively on the firs and the second day of October," said Zhang Zhiqiang, an official who is in charge of the sanitation work for the Tian'anmen Square during the National Day holiday.
"On Oct. 1 alone, our sanitation workers swept out 39.8 tons (87,761 lbs.) of garbage," he said, "and they collected and moved away another 39.5 tons (87,100 lbs.) of garage the next day."
The garage include plastic bags, newspapers, packages of drinks and food, and camera film boxes. Some of them were left by people who stay overnight on the Square for the national flag raising ceremony.
It has been a tradition for Chinese, both visitors and some local residents, to pay a visit to the Square during the National Day holiday. The Square, the largest city square in the world occupying an area of 440,000 square meters, or about the size of 63 football fields, is usually decorated with plants and lights for this special occasion.
China's National Day falls on Oct. 1, the date when late Chinese leader Mao Zedong declared the founding of New China in 1949. The National Day became the first week-long holiday in 1999 when the State Council, the Chinese cabinet, promulgated a new regulation to prolong three festivals into week-long holidays.
Chinese people who have never been able to enjoy such a long holiday before showed their huge enthusiasm -- the country has received 28 million home tourists and cashed in 14.1 billion yuan (about 1.76 billion U.S. dollars) of tourism income.
The two others week-long holidays are the Spring Festival, China's Lunar New Year, and the Labor Day on May 1.
