Han Ximin

THE city is facing unprecedented traffic strain during the first three-day Qingming Festival holiday as 1 million people are expected to flock to cemeteries to clean around the tombs of their deceased loved ones over the weekend.

The civil affairs bureau said the estimate was made according to last year’s number, which hit 1.07 million.

Although the city’s major cemeteries and memorial parks have drawn up contingency plans for swarms of visitors, traffic remains a headache for cemetery management offices.

“According to our survey, around 1 million will sweep tombs Friday alone, a great challenge to traffic at cemeteries,” Chen Haiyun, chief of the city’s cemetery administration office, said Thursday. Among the visitors will be people from Hong Kong and Taiwan, who will arrive in town Friday.

The city’s Qingming Festival office said it had suggested staggered tomb-sweeping times for people, but this has had little effect since most people prefer Friday, the day designated for sweeping tombs and honoring ancestors.

By Tuesday, no more than 60,000 people had visited cemeteries, it said.

“In general, there are around 5-8 sweepers for one tomb and most will come in cars, but parking spaces on offer are far from enough,” said Mo Jianfeng, chief of Nanshan’s cemetery management office.

There are no road signs pointing to the city’s funeral home, which lies near the Jitian Cemetery in Longgang District, the biggest cemetery in the city. But Shawan Road, a major road leading to the cemetery, is notorious for traffic jams, and the situation would be worse during the holidays, Chen said.

The public is encouraged to get rid of old, backward habits and customs when honoring the ancestors. On Tomb-Sweeping Day. people pray before the ancestors, sweep the tombs and offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks and paper accessories, among other things.

Parents of police officer Ding Jianqing honor their son who died on duty in 2004. They were attending a Qingming memorial ceremony in Shenzhen on Thursday. More than 700 people, including city leaders, police officers and family members of the deceased officers, attended the ceremony held at the municipal public security bureau complex. Official statistics show a total of 47 Shenzhen police officers have died on duty since 1949. Yu Haibo