The border opening follows Saturday’s start of “chun yun”, the first 40-day period of Chinese New Year travel, which before the pandemic was the world’s largest annual migration of people returning to their hometowns or taking holidays with family.
About 2 billion people are expected to travel this season, nearly double last year’s movement and recovering to 70 per cent of 2019 levels, the government says.
Many Chinese are also expected to start travelling abroad, a long-awaited shift for tourist spots in countries such as Thailand and Indonesia, though several governments – worried about China’s COVID-19 spike – are imposing curbs on travellers from the country.
Travel will not quickly return to pre-pandemic levels due to such factors as a dearth of international flights, analysts say.
China on Sunday also resumed issuing passports and travel visas for mainland residents, and ordinary visas and residence permits for foreigners.
Beijing has quotas on the number of people who can travel between Hong Kong and the mainland each day.
Videos posted on Chinese social media showed workers at Shanghai’s Pudong airport overnight taking down bright blue boards marking routes through its international terminal to enforce a regime that required travellers from abroad to quarantine for up to eight days upon arrival.
Other videos showed people hugging emotionally upon reuniting at the airport gate.
At Hong Kong’s Lok Ma Chau checkpoint, a driver who only gave his surname Yip, said that he was among those who could not wait to travel to the mainland.
“It’s been three years, we have no time to delay,” he said.
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