More than 250,000 travelers from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan returned home through Shenzhen checkpoints Wednesday, the last peak of the seven-day holidays.

Congestion was diminished at checkpoints as staff were required to process documents within 5 to 10 seconds for Chinese people _ including those from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan _ and 40 seconds for foreigners.

Statistics from Shenzhen's exit and entry frontier inspection authority showed that 2.6 million passengers traveled via Shenzhen checkpoints during the seven-day holidays which started Jan 22.

Many Hong Kong people came to Shenzhen to enjoy the comparatively cheap restaurants and colorful theme parks, while mainlanders joined in festival shopping sprees in Hong Kong.

More than 40,000 mainlanders returned through the city's checkpoints Wednesday. This year, about 60 percent of mainlanders who traveled overseas in the holidays chose Japan, Australia and New Zealand rather than Southeast Asian countries.

The 24-hour service for passengers at Huanggang Checkpoint since Jan.27 last year directly encouraged the travel boom. More than 36 million passengers have made use of the checkpoint, up 34.5 percent over the previous year, according to a checkpoint news release Tuesday.

(Shenzhen Daily January 29, 2004)