While Spring Festival holiday is a time to reconnect with family, not all Chinese return home to celebrate. More and more people take the advantage of the week-long holidays to travel. CGTN's Zheng Chunying has the story.

With stunning white beaches and shimmering blue waters, Hainan island attracts millions of visitors during the Chinese New Year Holiday. Instead of enduring the cold in their hometowns, many decided to usher in the Year of the Dog in the warmth of the sun.

"It's so beautiful. We really enjoyed ourselves here. We'll surely come back next year."

In a break from the traditional festival activities, Hainan offers visitors a different kind of fun.

"I can do many sporting activities here. It's a really fresh experience for me, very relaxing."

But not all travel experiences are as relaxing. During the first four days of the Spring Festival Holiday, tourist sites around China received a staggering 287 million visitors. That's up 11 percent from the same period last year

High demand saw the Sanya-Beijing airfare triple. As of Tuesday, it cost more than 15,000 RMB to travel from Hainan to Beijing and some 20,000 RMB from Hainan to Harbin in the northeast. In southwest Sichuan Province, tourists braved long steep queues to just catch a glimpse of the Leshan Giant Buddha. A typical online complaint was "such a trip was just suffering". But no one ever said it would be easy. ZHENG CHUNYING, CGTN.