Many tourists go to the Shenzhen Bay Park in South China's Guangdong Province to enjoy the scenery on May 1. (Photo: VCG)

On the first day of the May Day holidays, China witnessed 23.197 million domestic tourists, generating a revenue of about 9.77 billion yuan ($1.38 billion), according to official statistics. 

China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism said that about 70 percent of national scenic areas have been open to the public. These scenic areas are trying to control the flow of visitors to under 30 percent of the maximum capacity—yet seldom have so many visitors been seen in a single day at such destinations, the ministry said. 

Certain scenic areas in China were still crowded under flow control measures, while other destinations had sharp decreases, as some viral videos online show.

A video posted on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo shows thousands of tourists queuing up all night at the Taishan Mountain in East China's Shandong Province to wait for the sunrise. Another video on btime.com shows an almost empty plank road at the Huangshan Mountain in East China's Anhui Province, which is also typically one of the hottest destinations for visitors.

Amid the COVID-19 epidemic, the number of tourists during this year's May Day holidays was expected to be 60 percent of last year's numbers, Dai Bin, dean of China Tourism Academy, told the China Central Television on Friday.

During the May Day holidays last year, there were 195 million tourists across the country with a total revenue of 120 billion yuan, which means about 50 million tourists traveled every day, according to a report by Technology Daily on Saturday.