Shanghai sets single-day travel record

SOME 148,000 people arrived in or left China via Shanghai on July 14, setting a new single-day travel volume record, the Shanghai General Station of Immigration Inspection said yesterday.

In the first six months of this year, the city recorded more than 22.77 million inbound and outbound passengers, up 9.3 percent compared by the same period last year.

Since summer started, an average of 135,000 inbound and outbound travelers have pass through Shanghai each day.

Many of them are children from the Chinese mainland traveling with their parents or joining overseas summer camps, officials said.

Between January 1 and July 15, more than 25,000 foreign visitors took advantage of the 144-hour visafree transit policy offered at Pudong International Airport. This represents a 20 percent increase over the same period last year,

The policy was introduced in 2016 and allows foreign visitors to stay in Shanghai, as well as Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, without a visa for 144 hours.

Meanwhile, 7.65 million passengers have used self-service immigration clearance channels, which are available to Chinese and expatriates with permanent residency, or related permits, valid for six months or longer.

There are 156 such channels in the city’s airports and ports, and they allow travelers to clear immigration in an average of just 10 seconds.