Shanghai's tourist spots told to play the numbers game

Shanghai's tourism authorities have released details of the maximum number of people that will be allowed to visit 72 attractions during the Spring Festival holiday.

At the Oriental Pearl TV Tower in the Pudong New Area, a maximum of 35,000 visitors will be allowed per day, with a ceiling of 15,000 at any given time.

The tower, which overlooks the Huangpu River, is one of the city's three top-graded national tourist attractions, along with Shanghai Wildlife Park and the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.

A maximum of 30,000 people will be allowed to visit the science museum each day, with no more than 10,000 at a time, while the daily limit for the animal park has been set at 96,000, the Shanghai Tourism Administration said.

At Yuyuan Garden, the daily maximum is 15,000, with no more than 3,000 at one time, while at Gucun Park in Baoshan District, the daily limit was set at an incredibly precise 177,610.

The attraction with the lowest daily limit is the Shanghai Nanshe Memorial Hall in the town of Zhangyan, Jinshan District, with 500.

The daily limit for Shanghai Ocean Aquarium is 29,000.

All of the ceiling figures were calculated with help from the city's tourism, public security, greenery, planning and architecture bureaus, as well as input from outside experts, the administration said.

The operators of each venue must strictly abide by their allotted numbers and should immediately halt the sale of tickets in the event of either ceiling being reached, it said.

The publication of the ceiling figures comes in the wake of the New Year's Eve tragedy on the Bund, in which 36 people were killed.

The tourism authority said that the public has the right to know how many other people will be attending each venue before making the decision to buy a ticket.

On February 14, last year, about 600,000 people visited Yuyuan Garden for the annual Lantern Festival display. This year's event has been canceled out of safety concerns.