During the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Taicang buzzed with commercial and touristic activities as throngs of visitors poured into the city.

Ten major commercial complexes raked in a remarkable 145 million yuan ($20.35 million) in sales, representing a 4.7-percent rise over the previous year. During the holiday period, Wanda Plaza unveiled a wide range of first stores, with the highest daily footfall reaching around 100,000. Meanwhile, the mall recorded 38.64 million yuan in sales, up 12.7 percent year-on-year.

Music festival in Taicang is packed with tourists during the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. [Photo/WeChat account: tcfbgw]

Tourism also flourished, with 17 tourism attractions in the city receiving a total of 866,800 visitors as of Oct 7. Houlang Young Street held a three-day music festival sponsored by Chi Forest, a leading sugar-free sparkling beverage brand in China, drawing nearly 100,000 fans eager to be immersed in musical revelries. A retro-style parade in Zhenghe Park took tourists back to the 1980s, becoming a hit; Changjiang Forest Adventure Park was alive with forest and wetland adventures; the evening datiehua (molten iron fireworks) performance in Shuangfeng town was fully packed.

Statistics shows that from Oct 1 to 7, Taicang transported 462,702 passengers, marking a 28.3 percent increase over the same period last year. Among them, railways transported 212,447 passengers, up 34.2 percent year-on-year; passenger buses carried 25,180 passengers; chartered buses saw a 96.2 percent year-on-year surge, transporting 4,724 passengers.