People across China enjoy lively, featured activities during National Day holiday

People in urban and rural areas across China have been enjoying grand performances, outdoor cultural fairs, and gatherings with local characteristics during the week-long National Day holiday, which started on Oct.1.

At the Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park, various night performances, such as float parades, traditional torch festival of Yi ethnic group, firework shows, drone shows, and water curtain light shows, have provided visitors with audiovisual feasts.

At the aquarium in the park, music performance with killer whale soaring out of the water and the underwater mermaid dancing show also attracted flocks of holidaymakers.

"On Oct. 2 and 3, the total number of tourists per day exceeded 50,000. The hotel occupancy rate will reach more than 95 percent for 10 consecutive days from Sept. 28 to Oct. 7. The unit price of the room will increase by 21 percent compared with the summer vacation, with both quantity and price rising," said Jiang Lu, deputy general manager of the Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park. A large-scale water curtain light show was also staged on the banks of the Shanxi River in an ancient town of Shengzhou City of east China's Zhejiang Province, and audiences were amazed by the natural integration of local Yue Opera, lights and shadows, fountains, and fireworks.

"I brought my family to watch this light and water show, especially the water curtain show in the middle of the performance, which was very novel and shocking," said a tourist.

During the holiday, bustling fish lantern parades were staged at an ancient village in Huangshan City of east China's Anhui Province. Villagers carried large fish lanterns and walked through streets and alleys, and also set up teaching booths for tourists to make their own fish lanterns to join the parade and share the happiness together.

"It feels very lively today, and the people here are very enthusiastic. There are fireworks and fish lantern parades, which I have not seen in other places," said a tourist.

The outdoor street market in Yangzhou City of east China's Jiangsu Province has set up an intangible cultural heritage food area with 30 stalls, and intangible cultural heritage food inheritors also demonstrated their production skills at the scene.

The outdoor market also provides creative products of local intangible cultural heritages, and stages special folk music performances.

"During the National Day holiday, the number of visitors to our outdoor market has been increasing every day, and about 80,000 to 90,000 people come here per day. So far, our total sales volume is about 1.5 million yuan (about 213,700 U.S. dollars)," said Fan Xiaoping, deputy Party secretary of Yangzhou Canal Culture.

In Shexian County of Anhui Province, an outdoor market featuring calligraphy, tea, and seal carving arts while gathering related intangible cultural heritage inheritors was opened to visitors and local residents during the holiday, and the market is expected to receive 200,000 visitors during the holiday.

People across China enjoy lively, featured activities during National Day holiday

The population of golden-haired monkeys, or snub-nosed monkeys, at a reserve in southwest China's Yunnan Province has been steadily increasing as conservation authorities adopt new technologies to protect wildlife and boost biodiversity.

The 2,821-square-kilometer Baima Snow Mountain National Nature Reserve sits in the core zone of the Three Parallel Rivers of the Yunnan Protected Areas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The reserve stands as an exemplary model for the province's efforts to protect the Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys, an endangered species unique to China.

New digital technologies are playing an increasingly vital role in this initiative. Among them is a set of weight scales readable by remote control, which were added to the national nature reserve this year to more effectively monitor the health status of the monkeys.

A total of 11 new baby monkeys were born this year, said staff, adding that their current weights are within the normal range and they are all in good health.

In addition to monitoring the monkey's weight changes, they collect and detect the feces of the primates every season to learn about their physical condition, said Lai Jiandong, head of the wildlife rescue station at the reserve.

Conservationists also use cutting-edge advances to collect exhaustive data on the monkeys' habitat.

"The technology we are utilizing is laser radar, and its advantage is that it can create a three-dimensional reconstruction of the Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys' habitat. This enables us to assess the habitat quality of the monkeys over a larger area, compared with traditional remote sensing methods, which rely solely on imagery or ground-based manual surveys. The traditional methods cannot reflect the three-dimensional habitat of the Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys," explained Yang Haitao, an associate researcher at the Institute of Remote Sensing and GIS under Peking University.

This year, the nature reserve has also reintroduced 40 Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys to the wild in order to promote genetic exchange. The group of 40 Yunnan golden hair monkeys includes three families and one group of males, with the youngest being just three months old.

Data showed that the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey population in the Baima Snow Mountain National Nature Reserve has increased from nearly 500 individuals when the nature reserve was established in 1983 to roughly 2,500 individuals at present, making up 65 percent of the total population of the species in China.

Dubbed "elves of the snow mountain", Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys live in the mountainous forests of Yunnan and the neighboring Tibet Autonomous Region. They are listed as national first-class rare and endangered protected species in China and as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

New technologies help monitor endangered snub-nosed monkeys in Yunnan