A record 40,200 vehicles and 182,000 passengers crossed the Qiongzhou Strait on Monday, its peak day of the ongoing Spring Festival travel rush, marking a historic milestone for the vital transport route connecting south China's island province of Hainan with neighboring Guangdong Province on the mainland, according to the Pearl River Administration of Navigational Affairs under the Ministry of Transport.
Official data showed that during the 2026 Spring Festival holiday, which ran from Feb 15 to 23, the Qiongzhou Strait's ro-ro (roll-on/roll-off) shipping routes saw the operation of 2,564 ship voyages, carrying 1.273 million passengers and 290,000 vehicles.
During the nine-day holiday, the Qiongzhou Strait saw its ro-ro transport voyages, passenger volume, and vehicle volume increase by 18.2 percent, 19.2 percent, and 13.3 percent year-on-year, respectively.
Meanwhile, the average daily vehicle volume reached 32,000 crossings, setting a new historical record. New energy vehicles (NEVs) emerged as a major driver of the growth, with an average of over 6,400 units crossing the strait daily -- a striking year-on-year increase of more than 60 percent.
From the third to the seventh day of this Chinese New Year holiday, the daily volume of vehicles departing Hainan remained above 20,000 for five consecutive days.
The annual Spring Festival travel rush, known as "chunyun" in Chinese and often described as the world's largest human migration, is expected to generate a record 9.5 billion inter-regional passenger trips during the 40-day period running from Feb. 2 to March 13 this year, according to previous estimates.
China's Qiongzhou Strait sees record daily vehicle flow in Spring Festival travel rush
