Pingyao is a Shanxi hotspot during Spring Festival

This year's Spring Festival, Feb 18 - 24, saw Shanxi province with about 6 million visitors from China and overseas, or more than 14 percent more than for the same last year period, according to the provincial tourism bureau, and bringing in 2.8 billion yuan ($448 million) in tourism revenues.

And, it turns out, Pingyao county was the hottest of all the provincial tourist destinations, reports Chinanews.com, on Feb 24, giving a total of 240,000 people during the festival.

A grand "Chinese New Year" celebration contributed a lot to the county's popularity by giving tourists a chance to visit local folk houses, have a traditional Spring Festival dinner, make dumplings, make some paper cuts, watch local plays, and take part in folk craft contests. The celebration was the perfect time and place to enjoy Shanxi customs, with the temple fairs the most popular event of the festival period.

Major tourist spots in the province offered a variety of fairs or lantern shows, to add to the festive atmosphere, while Pingyao county offered some rural ecology tours, at the Liuhe and Hengpo ecological parks and the Xiangyuan Pear Garden, with local cuisine, folk performances, and natural beauty.

In addition to the rural and ecological travel products, there was a lot of snow during the festival period so the province's ski resorts saw a large number of visitors.

And outbound tourism was up a lot, as much as 2 - 3-times of the figure for last year, with Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Bali, Indonesia, and Phuket, Thailand, being the most popular destinations.