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)