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During the first week of the Lunar New Year holiday, Shanghai racked up 1.05 billion yuan (US$126.5 million) in tourist earnings as nearly 2 million visitors came to the bustling city, said Jin Fang, director of the office of the Shanghai Tourism Administrative Management Committee. "Shanghai has the capacity to receive this many tourists easily," said Jin. To stimulate consumption, the Chinese government traded weekends to create week-long breaks for the Labor Day holiday in May and the National Day in October last year. Then they organized the first week-long Lunar New Year holiday this year. The three weeks are called "golden weeks" in China, meaning golden times for boosting the holiday economy. "Last Labor Day, some tourists had to live in auditoriums or railway stations while last National Day, hotel rates dropped sharply because tourists were frightened by their terrible experience in May," said Jin. "After the previous two golden weeks, tourists have become mature now. Many avoid traveling on the holidays." During the two golden weeks last year, tour prices soared 50 to 100 percent because hotels and traffic tickets were in great demand. But the prices for tour during the Lunar new year golden week dropped 30 percent compared with the previous two holidays. "Despite three days' drizzle, we received around 15,000 tourists from the country, 67 percent more than the same period last year, bringing us more profit," said Chen Jisheng, deputy director of Inbound Travel Department of Spring International Travel Agency, the largest operator of domestic tours in China. "More visitors come to Shanghai during the holiday for shopping and metropolitan sights." Another reason was that the price was only a little higher than usual.