This year Shanghai has seen a larger group of students touring west than before since the summer vacation began in July, Xinwen Evening News reported.

Tickets to the western China areas are sold out extraordinarily fast at the Shanghai Railway Station, transportation officials said.

Some 700 seats of a train to Urumchi, capital city of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region are sold out within a minute in 100 ticket windows in the Station, officials said.

It's really hard to handle such a large number of passengers, officials said, even when the station added new trains to the western areas including Xinjang, Qinghai, Yunnan and Shaanxi.

During the first ten days of the month, some 730,000 passengers set out from the Shanghai Railway Station, 3.4 percent more than a year earlier.

(Eastday.com.cn 07/17/2001)