Red tourism gets a boost

Chen Gang, a professor from Jinggangshan University, says young people visit historical places linked to the revolution led by the Communist Party of China from 1921 to 1949, hoping to find inspiration to tackle the challenges they face.

The number of tourists visiting sites linked to the revolution led by the Communist Party of China almost tripled in the first half of 2017, as compared with the same period in 2016.

China's red tourism has seen a boom over the years, as more people visit historical places linked to the revolution led by the Communist Party of China from 1921 to 1949.

The number of tourists almost tripled in the first half of 2017, as compared with the same period in 2016, says a report by the domestic online travel agency Lvmama, headquartered in Shanghai.

The sites received roughly 1.15 billion visits in 2016, up 11.7 percent over the previous year, and tourism income from these sites was 306.1 billion yuan ($45.74 billion), up 17.2 percent, according to Tuniu, another major online travel agency based in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of young people are visiting such sites, with those born in the 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s accounting for almost 50 percent of the traffic, according to Lvmama's report.