Photo taken on Oct. 7 shows the Three Gorges Dam after it started to hold back water since Sept. 10. (Photo: Xinhua/Zheng Jiayu)
The Three Gorges Dam resort at the world’s largest hydropower project received over 2 million tourists in 2015, the company announced Friday.
Many tourists made road trips there, as an access road was opened to the public in March, according to a manager with the China Three Gorges Corporation.
The dam in central China’s Hubei Province has offered free entrance for home and overseas Chinese since September 2014 and tourism has boomed since then.
Kong Lei, head of the local tourism bureau, said the popularity of the Three Gorges had a knock-on effect in nearby Yichang City. The number of tourists visiting the city increased by 21.6 percent in the first half of last year, bringing in revenue of nearly 23 billion yuan (3.5 billion U.S. dollars), up by more than a third.
The Three Gorges Dam is one of five major tourist sites along the Yangtze River and the country’s largest industrial tourism site. Generating electricity since 2003, the dam was opened to the public in 2005.
