But, like millions of others, the frustrated father will stay put again this year as authorities warned against travel over fears of an embarrassing Covid-19 outbreak before a key leadership meeting this month.
“It’s not worth taking the risk” to travel, Duan said.
“Not only traveling overseas, but visiting popular domestic tourism spots has gone out the window too.”
Even as they mull loosening restrictions on foreign visitors, jittery Chinese officials are taking no chances at a time when hundreds of millions traditionally crisscross the country to see faraway relatives.
Schools in Shanghai – where millions endured a grueling two-month lockdown earlier this year – have warned students or staff not to leave the city of 25 million during the weeklong holiday, while Beijing is calling on visitors to register with local government offices and take repeated PCR tests to prove they’re virus-free.
The southern city of Kunming is going even further with a three-day quarantine for anyone visiting from several regions hit by recent outbreaks.
Yesterday, the government designated 1,619 locations nationwide as medium to high-risk areas, meaning they were under some form of Covid restrictions.
Hot spot areas can change at any time and affect local residents’ mobility status on a GPS-tracking health app required for taking public transit and entering many buildings.
“This is one of the most sensitive times for China’s leadership in years,” said Thomas Zhang, a China expert at US advisory FrontierView.
“Political stability (zero-Covid included) now trumps all other considerations. This is certainly another blow to the tourism industry, which is already struggling to recover from the woes caused by lockdowns earlier this year.”
The warnings appear to be having the desired effect ahead of the Communist Party’s once-every-five-years Congress in Beijing, where President Xi Jinping is expected to secure an unprecedented third term.
Online searches for hotel accommodation are down 30% on the year as of Sept 18, according to a report by Trip.com Hotel Group Hub.
There have been no official projections for this year, but the transport ministry has said it expects road trips during the holiday to drop by 30%.
Travel numbers for last year’s National Day holidays, which marks communist China’s 1949 founding, were down about 34% from 781 million logged in pre-pandemic 2019.
“Sentiment is relatively better than during the mid-autumn festival period,” Jefferies said in a note, referring to a holiday in early September.
“But consumers are still wary of sudden traffic restriction measures and are avoiding traveling too far.”
Tourism revenue during the 2019 holiday hit 650 billion yuan, but consumers have become more cautious in the pandemic-driven downturn.
Major cities across China have been hit by repeated lockdowns this year under Xi’s signature zero-Covid policy, even as it hammered the world’s No 2 economy which narrowly dodged a contraction in the second quarter.
Economists and financial institutions have been slashing their growth estimates for China, which had earlier set a full-year GDP expansion target around 5.5%.
“Ongoing restrictions and testing requirements as part of the (zero-Covid) approach is weighing heavily on consumer spending, particularly services such as catering and travel,” said economists at Fitch Ratings, which cut its full-year GDP growth estimate to just 2.8% from an earlier 3.75%.
The latest travel restrictions are likely to deal a heavy blow to already limp retail sales that slipped 0.5% in the first eight months of this year.
There are growing hopes that China will loosen domestic curbs as most countries drop restrictions altogether.
But few think it will happen soon as local officials fear getting blamed for a public health fiasco.
The government this month issued a draft policy for reopening its borders to foreign tourists after more than two years.
Still, travel curbs – both domestic and international – may last into the second quarter of next year “given an active political calendar over the next six months and still-subdued vaccination rates for the elderly population”, Goldman Sachs said.
Restrictions or not, Paul Gu and his partner are determined to leave their home in tech hub Shenzhen and head for the scenic mountains of Yunnan Province next week.
“The government has issued travel warnings during national holidays for the past three years,” he said.
“But I don’t want to get caught at home again as the world opens up.”