If, like us, you're stuck in Shanghai over the National Day holiday (hey, somebody's gotta give everyone else stuck in town something to read and entertain themselves with, right?), we suggest you stay right at home. Because if you haven't been around during any Golden Week, you won't know what a nightmare it is going to be out there.

And the Shanghai Metro is already gearing itself up for a record National Day holiday season, with about 1.2 million extra tickets already printed.

Shanghai Daily has some interesting figures for us:

• The maximum daily turnover of Metro Lines 1, 2, 3, and 4 is expected to surpass 2.8 million people, according to the management, while the daily average will be more than 2.2 million for the holiday starting on October 1.
• The Metro company said the city is seeing a rapidly growing number in subway turnover in recent months.During the first eight months of this year, daily turnover of the four lines in service reached 2.15 million, a record and an increase of 25.6 percent on the same period last year.
• The third quarter of the year sees the most considerable growth as 2.18 million riders on average travelled by the network, jumping 2.7 percent from the second quarter this year and 26 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

Thanks, but it just makes us wanna stay home all the more. Anybody wanna pop by for dinner and DVDs?

Photo from it aint me