Large crowds force Forbidden City to rethink ticketing policy

Overwhelmed by a huge number of visitors who flocked to the capital's
Forbidden City during the National Day holiday, authorities at the
590-year-old palace said an e-ticketing system will be introduced next year
to cap entries in a bid to protect the monument. One of China's biggest
tourist attractions, the Palace Museum, as it is also known, received far
more visitors during the seven-day Golden Week holiday than its daily
capacity of 60,000. On Oct 2 alone, some 122,000 people entered through the
gate of the Forbidden City, the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming
Dynasty (1368-1644) to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Currently,
all tickets to the walled enclosure, located in central Beijing, are sold
manually, which fails to accurately monitor the flow of visitors. "Once the
e-ticketing system is operational, the computer will stop selling tickets if
the number of visitors has reached the museum's maximum capacity," Feng
Nai'en, the museum's assistant director, told China Daily on Wednesday.
(October 7, 2010, China Daily)