China ushered in a travel rush on Friday, the first day of the three-day Qingming Festival holiday, as millions of people either returned to their hometowns for traditional tomb-sweeping rituals or headed for other cities for spring outings.
The Qingming Festival, also known as the Tomb-Sweeping Day, is a traditional Chinese festival observed to honor ancestors by visiting their graves to clean the tombstones, offer sacrifices, and pay respects.
China's national railway system is expected to handle 19.85 million passenger trips on Friday, with 1,009 additional trains added to meet the surging demand.
From Thursday to Monday, the railway departments across various regions will implement a peak-period operational schedule, adding extra capacity on popular routes and during high-demand times to accommodate more travelers.
Many travelers opt for self-driving during the holiday, contributing to increased traffic on expressways.
It is predicted that about 62 million vehicle trips will be made on nationwide expressways on Friday, nearly 1.8 times the usual daily volume.
Domestic air travel is also seeing a significant uptick, with the number of domestic air passenger trips projected to reach 1.48 million on Friday, marking a 7 percent year-on-year rise.
To meet this heightened demand, around 12,000 domestic flights have been scheduled.
With the holiday underway, authorities are closely monitoring transportation networks to ensure safe and efficient travel for the millions of people on the move.
China ushers in travel rush on first day of Qingming Festival holiday
The Sanya branch of the Peking University (PKU) Hospital of Stomatology based in the tourist resort city of Sanya in south China's tropical Hainan Province -- the country's first national-level regional dental specialty center -- officially opened on Saturday, providing local residents and tourists with access to top-tier dental care without leaving Hainan.
As a key city in the Hainan Free Trade Port and a hub for both tourism and wellness, Sanya has seen rising demand for oral healthcare. Local resources, however, have long been strained.
The newly launched hospital aims to ease the situation. Both its management and medical teams come directly from the main campus of the PKU Hospita of Stomatology in Beijing, ensuring seamless integration and unified standards across diagnoses, treatment, and service quality. The facility comprises of nine specialized buildings, including an emergency outpatient complex and an international medical services building, covering all sub-specialties in dental medicine.
"Since the official start of Hainan Free Trade Port's island-wide special customs operations [on December 18, 2025], the very first zero-tariff items entering the region were advanced dental equipment for our hospital. This enables a wide range of patients in the Hainan region to access the world's latest dental treatment equipment and technology more quickly," said Deng Xuliang, president of the PKU Hospital of Stomatology.
Looking ahead, the main campus of the PKU Hospital of Stomatology will collaborate with medical universities in Hainan to jointly train more specialized professionals for grassroots-level healthcare institutions across the region. Through technical mentorship and integrated training programs, the initiative aims to leverage the policy advantages of the free trade port to build a high-level, comprehensive platform that integrates medical services, education, research, public health, and healthcare management, with particular attention on international patient services and comfort-focused treatment.
"The operation of medical care plus health and wellness programs and of medical care plus tourism projects has jointly contributed to the formation of an internationalized medical care platform in Sanya, which presents a major opportunity for both Sanya and the rest of Hainan, especially as the free trade port enters full operation, making more duty-free medicines and medical devices available locally," said Hu Yulei, director of the Sanya Municipal Health Commission.
Hainan's Sanya opens first national dental specialty center
