A record of 2.4 million Shanghai residents will pay visits to
their ancestral tombs in nearby cities around Friday, the Winter
Solstice Festival of this year, growing 230,000 from a year
earlier.
The city's traffic authorities have opened more routes and
arranged 300 more buses to meet the needs of the weekend traffic
peaks.
Authority reminded local residents to avoid the peak hours of
sweeping groves, and had better depart from the city after 1:30
PM.
The Winter Solstice Festival is the last festival on the Chinese
lunar calendar each year. It usually falls on December 21 or 22 to
coincide with the winter solstice.
Different from the Qingming Festival, which is a time both for
setting up new tombs and sweeping old tombs, the festival is
considered the best time for burying ashes.
About 25,000 new tombs will also be set up and about 143,000
vehicles will be used to take people to the graveyards, according
to officials from the funeral management division of the Shanghai
Civil Affairs Bureau.
(Shanghai Daily December 19, 2006)