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Free admission to tourist attractions, extended office hours: Chinese cities roll out measures to encourage couples tie the knot on Qixi_我的网站

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    A newlywed couple poses for a photo after receiving their marriage certificate at the marriage registration office in Wuhu, East China's Anhui Province, on August 29, 2025. The day is also the Qixi Festival or Chinese Valentine's Day.
From group weddings and free admission to tourist attractions for newlyweds, to extended hours at marriage registration offices, cities across China rolled out a range of measures around Wednesday to make it easier for couples to tie the knot on Qixi Festival, often known as Chinese Valentine's Day.
Tourist attractions in several Chinese cities, including Meishan in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, Zhoukou in Central China's Henan Province, Yueyang in Central China's Hunan Province and Hanzhong in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, have announced free or discounted admission for newlyweds to mark Qixi Festival.
The Jiangkou Sunken Silver Museum in Meishan is offering free admission from August 19 to 23 to newlyweds who register their marriages in the city between August 19 and 21, an employee surnamed Zhao told the Global Times. She said couples can enter the museum by presenting their marriage certificates and identity documents.
She said the museum also offers interactive activities for couples, including photo opportunities with golden bowls and cups symbolizing a marriage "stronger than gold," as well as a scavenger hunt for artifacts associated with love, such as ancient rings.
Zhao said the initiative was designed to embrace the festive spirit of Qixi while also conveying the museum's best wishes to newlyweds.
At the Taihao Fuxi Mausoleum cultural tourism area in Zhoukou, couples can receive free admission on August 19 by presenting their marriage certificate and identification.
Junshan Island in Yueyang has set up a special marriage registration station for Qixi Festival, where couples can register their marriages and receive their marriage certificates on site. Couples who register on the island that day will also be granted free admission to the attraction for life, media reported. 
Meanwhile, the Hanjiangyuan Scenic Area in Shaanxi is offering 99 couples lifetime free admission. The benefit is registered to the two individuals in each couple and, in a playful twist, becomes permanently invalid if either person changes partner.
Qixi Festival has long been a popular date for couples to register their marriages. Marriage registration offices in several Chinese cities have extended their opening hours to accommodate couples hoping to tie the knot on the traditionally romantic occasion.
In Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, marriage registration offices across the city are accepting both online appointments and walk-ins on August 19. Local civil affairs authorities said the offices will remain open until all couples waiting to register have been served, even if online appointment slots are fully booked.
Similar measures have been introduced in Dazhou, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, where registration offices will remain open through the lunch break and extend their hours in the evening. In Dachuan district, staff will arrive an hour early, forgo their lunch break and stay beyond normal closing time until all couples present have completed their marriage registrations.
A Dazhou resident surnamed Mo told the Global Times that she had initially worried about whether she would be able to secure an appointment on August 19, but found there were enough slots available for marriage registration.
"Choosing Qixi to get married makes the day even more meaningful," Mo said, adding that she and her husband wore traditional Chinese hanfu for the occasion.
On August 13, a group wedding was held at Fuxi Cultural Square in Xihe county, Northwest China's Gansu Province, as part of celebrations for Qixi Festival. About 100 couples from across Longnan, including newlyweds and couples celebrating their silver and golden wedding anniversaries, took part in the ceremony, Gansu Daily reported. 
During the event, the newlyweds signed pledges promoting simpler wedding customs, including zero or low bride prices, while rejecting excessive bride prices, lavish ceremonies and competitive spending. Participants also jointly read an initiative advocating simpler marriage customs and pledged to embrace commitment and thrift in their married lives.
China registered 3.275 million marriages in the first half of this year, down 264,000 from the same period last year, while 1.383 million divorces were recorded, according to data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs last week.
According to statistics, China recorded 3.539 million marriages and 1.331 million divorces in the first half of 2025, compared with 3.43 million marriages and 1.274 million divorces in the same period of 2024. 
。         Shi Jianyang (L) and his grandfather check the growth of crops on a farmland near a forest area along the Maowusu Desert in northwest China's Shaanxi Province in 2026.(Xinhua)A drone sweeps above the pine forest, sending images of the woods to a screen below. Under the trees stands Shi Jianyang whose grandfather and hundreds of villagers came 40 years ago with shovels and saplings to stop advancing sand.
At 29, Shi belongs to a new generation of desert-control workers equipped with drones, machines and remote irrigation systems. An earth auger can now do in a day what once required about 200 laborers, while a single phone can control drip irrigation across more than 1,000 mu (about 66.67 hectares) of woodland.
For the older Shi's generation, the challenge was getting trees to survive in moving dunes. For the grandson, it is figuring out how to make those forests healthier and more resilient for decades to come.
Their story captures a broader shift in desert control along the southern edge of the Maowusu Desert in northwest China's Shaanxi Province: turning shifting sand into forest was only the beginning.
In 1986, Shi Guangyin, Shi Jianyang's grandfather, led more than 300 villagers into Langwosha, a sandy area in Dingbian County in Yulin City. He had raised 60,000 yuan (about 17,377 U.S. dollars at the time) by selling his family's 84 sheep and borrowing from relatives and banks to contract 3,500 mu of barren sandy land.
The early setbacks were severe. Strong winds destroyed about 90 percent of the saplings in the first year, and about 80 percent of those planted the following year failed to survive.
After seeking advice from forestry experts, Shi and the villagers laid out checkerboard-shaped barriers on windward slopes to hold the sand in place, then planted trees, shrubs and grasses within them. Sapling survival rates rose to about 80 percent.
Over the next four decades, Shi and those working alongside him treated 250,000 mu of sandy and saline-alkali land, with more than 53 million trees and shrubs taking root.
Greening the Maowusu Desert is part of a much larger national undertaking. It is one of the three major battlefronts of China's Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program, a decades-long effort to curb desertification across northern China.
China has made desertification control a national ecological priority. Since 2023, the country has stepped up efforts under the program, with greater emphasis on systematic restoration and on consolidating earlier gains.
Decades after the first trees took root, a new challenge emerged. Poplars planted decades ago for their rapid growth began reaching the end of their life cycle, with large numbers of trees dying, while forests dominated by a single species were more vulnerable to pests and disease.
Making a forest was one challenge. Keeping it healthy for another generation is another.
Shi Jianyang grew up watching his grandfather and father work to hold back the sand. His father, Shi Zhanjun, spent years planting trees alongside Shi Guangyin before dying in a road accident in 2008 while transporting saplings.
As a boy, Shi Jianyang sometimes resented the work that had taken his father. He spent summer holidays in makeshift tents in the sandy land, eating meals gritty with sand. During planting season, his father would return home with painful blisters in his mouth.
Yet he eventually chose forestry himself.
After studying forestry technology in university, Shi returned home in 2020 and began working in desert control. His team, initially made up of just seven or eight young locals, later brought in university graduates with expertise in soil science, landscaping and pest control.
The younger generation faced a different question: not simply how to make trees survive, but how to make a forest last.
Shi and his team spent more than 40 days in a 5,000-mu woodland setting up sample plots, measuring rainfall, studying soil microorganisms and tracking tree lodging. They proposed renewing aging forests with better-planned forest structures and expanded the planting of Mongolian pine, a long-lived evergreen species that had been successfully tested locally.
To date, about 50,000 mu of land has been planted with Mongolian pine. As some trees fail to survive and require replacement in subsequent planting seasons, the cumulative area of planting operations has reached about 65,000 mu.
Technology has also changed daily work. Drones patrol forests from the air, mechanized equipment dig planting pits, and irrigation can be managed remotely. Sapling survival rates, which Shi Guangyin's generation had raised to about 80 percent through improved sand-control and planting methods, have climbed further to about 92 percent with greater mechanization and more precise management.
Shi said the changes can be felt on the ground. Strong sandstorms have become rare, winds are weaker inside the forest, and the ground stays moist longer after rain. Summer days beneath the trees also feel cooler, while morning dew appears more often. The changes lead him to rethink desert control.
His approach also reflects a broader effort in China's desert regions to link ecological restoration with local livelihoods, giving communities a stronger economic stake in protecting restored land.
With his grandfather's support, Shi and his team have been looking for ways to make better use of the restored land as ecological conditions improve. They have developed potato seedlings suited to sandy soil, promoted greenhouse farming, and set up a livestock cooperative, while increasingly growing potatoes, watermelons and peppers on land once prone to losing water and nutrients.
Shi has also turned to livestreaming e-commerce to market potatoes and other local farm produce, while developing forest-based health and leisure projects. More than 2,000 local residents have seen their incomes rise steadily as farming, livestock breeding and other businesses have developed.
"We used to fear the sand and keep away from it. Now we understand it and know how to make use of it," Shi Guangyin said. "Today, there are opportunities to make a living everywhere in this sandy land."
Across Yulin, forest coverage has risen from 1.8 percent in 1949 to 34.8 percent, while shifting dunes that once encroached on villages have been brought under control.
For Shi Jianyang, however, the green landscape is not proof that the work is finished. "Planting a tree is not difficult," he said. "The difficult part is looking after it for decades."
The grandfather generation learned how to stop the sand. The young generation is learning how to make what grew there last.
    Shi Jianyang (R) and his grandfather check tree growth in a forest area in Dingbian County in Yulin City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province in 2026. (Xinhua)
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