Crowds welcome National Day

Highways, sites packed as more than 100 million begin their travels

They say if there's one day on the Chinese festival calendar when people should avoid going out, it is Oct 1, Chinese National Day and the first day of a long-expected seven-day break. And that is because, quite ironically, most people - despite bearing that lesson in mind - have ultimately found more reasons to venture out than simply stay inside.

Yet they shouldn't be blamed for being too forgetful about last year's impossible traffic jams on the highway and the equally impossible number of people who stormed the country's famous mountains and beaches like a whirlwind.