Li Hao
ABOUT 3.9 million travelers crossed the border between Shenzhen and Hong Kong during the Spring Festival holidays, which ended Tuesday, statistics from the general station of exit and entry frontier inspection showed.
About 2.5 million outbound travelers crossed city checkpoints during the holidays, mainly city residents with a multiple-entry Hong Kong visas and travelers from other mainland cities.
An increasing number of mainland tour groups and individual tourists toured Shenzhen before heading to Hong Kong, boosting holiday tourism in Shenzhen, the station said.
Meanwhile, a growing number of Hong Kong people spent the holidays in Shenzhen and other mainland cities for a family reunion and due to cheaper living costs.
The cross-border travel peaked Sunday when a total of 670,000 travelers crossed the border, mainly returning travelers, according to the station.
The newest checkpoint, Shenzhen Bay Checkpoint, had a record 108,788 cross-border travelers Sunday, around 60 percent of whom were returning to Hong Kong. Sunday was the end of the Spring Festival holidays in Hong Kong.
Mainland tourists who rushed to Hong Kong toward the end of the holidays had also contributed to the record number at the bay checkpoint.
Once little used by travelers, the bay checkpoint opened for a record 14 hours Sunday processing a continuous heavy flow of cross-border travelers.
More than 300,000 people crossed the busiest checkpoint Luohu on Sunday. Most were returning to Hong Kong and Macao.
At the only 24-hour checkpoint in China, Huanggang Checkpoint, there was a sharp increase in the number of cross-border travelers during the night while almost 100,000 people crossed the border each day through the checkpoint between midnight and 6:30 a.m.
