Crowds are seen at the Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station on May 4, 2023. It is the first working day after the five-day May Day holidays during which China saw a travel boom with 274 million trips made across the country. Photo: VCG

 
A young Chinese man's May Day holiday itinerary has gone viral on social media. The 30-year-old reached the peaks of the "five great mountains" - five of the most renowned mountains in China, in only five days, a feat that "would have been impossible without China's strong transportation network."

Nanduoduo, a frequent hiker, works in Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan. He came up with the "crazy idea" to punch-in all five mountains in five days a month ahead of the holidays and made a detailed plan to realize the goal. 

He departed from Chengdu on April 28 after work for the first stop at Mount Heng in Central China's Hunan Province - first flying to the provincial capital of Changsha and then riding a normal train to Hengshan station. 

Later Nanduoduo took a high-speed train to Changsha and an overnight train from Changsha to Zhengzhou in Central China's Henan Province where  Mount Song is located. 

On the evening of April 30, he rode a high-speed train to Tai'an in East China's Shandong in preparation for the second day's tour on Mount Tai. 

Similarly, he made a transfer in Beijing and took an overnight train to Datong in North China's Shanxi Province to climb Mount Heng. This complicated transfer involved a high-speed train, city buses and the city subway. 

Nanduoduo's final stop was Mount Hua in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province. He left the mountain at 18:10 on May 3 on a high-speed train, which took him back to Chengdu at 23:10. 

Nanduoduo planned the itinerary "down to every single minute" to make sure he could catch up every train and that the plan would go on smoothly, therefore the trip looks like an "intense training schedule" for a special squad soldier. 

The intensity was not a problem, as Nanduoduo has the habit of hiking and running marathons, the most difficult part was to snatch a ticket in time. "The travel rush was so fierce that I only got the ticket from Changsha to Zhengzhou the day of departure." 

The trip cost Nanduoduo 4,000 yuan ($579) and it would have been impossible without the country's extensive transportation network. 

"It's not only a super-cool travel log, but an advertisement for China's infrastructure," a netizen said on Weibo. 

"You should be named 'Lord of the Five Mountain Sword Schools Alliance,'" said another. Five Mountain Sword Schools Alliance is a fictional alliance in martial arts (wuxia) novels, a well known concept first created by late writer Jin Yong (Louis Cha Leung-yung).