Parks across Shanghai had more than 1.8 million visitors during the three-day Qingming Festival holiday, Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau said.

That was around 49 percent fewer than the same period last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the greenery authorities.

The majority, 1.74 million people, visited city parks while the remainder went to countryside parks. Though numbers were down, it was still a record for Shanghai's parks since their reopening in early March.

Flowers such as cherry blossom, wisteria, crab apple, magnolia and peony are now in full bloom, adding a splash of color to the city.

Century Park in the Pudong New Area limited sightseers to 16,000 visitors a day during the holiday, and tickets soon sold out. The park reopened on March 13 with half of its gates still closed.

Chenshan Botanical Garden in Songjiang District had 91,611 visitors over the last three days, while Gongqing Forest Park in Yangpu District had 75,280 and Shanghai Botanical Garden in Xuhui District 32,000.

Shanghai Zoo had 30,958 visitors during the holiday, with the number on the first two days of the holiday almost doubling that of the previous weekend. 

Yangpu Park, which is surrounded by residential complexes, was bustling again during the holiday. Its children's playground and amusement facilities reopened during the holiday, and there were queues in front of the slide.

"Disinfection has been enhanced at public areas of the park, and activities such as dancing and chess playing which may trigger gatherings are banned," said Wu Qingwen, a member of the park's management staff.

"We have also stepped up patrols by security guards to persuade visitors to avoid gatherings," said Wu.

Guyi Garden in Jiading District, a classic Jiangnan-style garden which dates back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), had 18,100 visitors over three days, also a record high since it reopened in March.

Shanghai-based online trip operator Trip.com said it witnessed an increase of over 366 percent in bookings for inter-province or inter-city group tours and a 114-percent rise in bookings for tourist attractions over the past week compared with the same period last month. There was also an over 50-percent increase in transport-related orders and a 60-percent increase in hotel bookings during the holiday compared with the same period last month as the badly hit tourism market showed signs of recovery. Short-distance tours lasting two or three days are popular, it said.

More than 3.37 million rail passengers were recorded in the Yangtze River Delta region between April 3 and 6, and most passengers were either those visiting family, sweeping the tombs of deceased relatives, or tourists on short-distance spring outings in the region, China Railway Shanghai Group said on Monday.

More than 1,300 trains operated daily in the region during the holiday, including over 900 high-speed trains, according to the group. The Yangtze River Delta sections of high-speed railway lines such as Shanghai-Beijing, Shanghai-Nanjing, Shanghai-Hangzhou, Hangzhou-Ningbo and Nanjing-Hangzhou had the largest number of passengers, the group said.