China Daily: As China comes down from a travel rush during the seven-day holiday for National Day, people called for a return of the Labor Day Golden Week holiday as a way to ease(缓解) the travel peak. By Friday, 79 million passengers were expected to have used the railways up about 8 percent over last year. Waterways had shipped around 2 million, a rise of about 17 percent on last year, www. cntv. cn, the website of China Central Television, said on Saturday. As large numbers of tourists swarmed scenic spots around China, it caused huge crowds and many complaints. The Forbidden City in Beijing has long been a big draw for travelers. On Tuesday alone, the museum reported, it received more than 180,000 visitors, about six times higher than a regular day. According to China Central Television, restless visitors demanded their money back from the tourism committee, and police were sent to help deal with the problem. The Beijing-HongKong-Macao expressway, the Shanghai-Kunming expressway and the route from Beijing to Kunming saw large increases in traffic on Saturday, according to www. cntv. cn. “As there are only two long holidays in the country and paid leave is not well carried out by employers（雇主）, people have limited chances for travel”, Dai Bin, the director of China Tourism Academy, said in a report by Beijing Times on Saturday. “The travel rush during the ‘Golden Week’ holidays happens because people do not take long journeys during shorter holidays”, said Liu Simin, a researcher with the China Academy of Social Sciences, in a report by Beijing Times on Saturday. Liu said that now the most important task is to ease the pressure from the huge numbers of tourists. When the Labor Day Golden Week holiday came to an end in 2007, a chance to travel was reduced. In 2008, the government shortened the Labor Day Golden Week holiday, usually lasting from May 1 to May 7, to three days and added three other short vacations to the list. 小题1:The Labor Day Golden Week holiday was shortened to __________________.
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