Short trips over long weekends

Tourists, many from China, take short trips to Japan's Okinawa as some travel companies offer three-day packages to such destinations.[Photo by Wang Zhide/China Daily]

We all agree Monday comes too soon. More Chinese are tacking on an extra day or two to their weekends to travel overseas, Yang Feiyue discovers.

Beijinger Zhang Feifei and four friends spent two days hauling heavy guns while hacking through the mucky woodlands－occasionally taking position in lookout towers and surveying the Russian mountainside from their jeep.

They'd tacked an extra day on either side of the weekend to hunt in the forests surrounding a mountainside farm near Russia's Lake Baikal in November.

They lodged at a cozy, family-run boutique hotel nearby.

"It was exhausting but thrilling," Zhang recalls.

"We saw a leopard, pheasants and other wild animals."

We all agree the weekend is too short.

But a growing number of Chinese travelers like Zhang are doing something about it－adding an extra day or two to take international trips.