Holiday travel surges as Hong Kong, Macao residents flock north during May Day holiday

A surge in cross-border travel has swept through the Zhuhai Port of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge in south China during the five-day May Day holiday starting from Friday, as growing numbers of residents from the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao head to the mainland for leisure and tourism.

Since April 29, or Wednesday, the border inspection station of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge has recorded 226,000 passenger trips and 52,000 vehicle crossings as of 16:00 on Friday. The current flow is primarily inbound, with many travelers choosing to enter the mainland ahead of the official holiday rush.

According to data from the border inspection station of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the holiday traffic has been predominantly inbound. The port officially entered its peak period on Wednesday, with daily passenger flow averaging around 80,000 people, a 10-percent increase compared to pre-holiday levels. This year's travel boom has come from sharp increase in family tours and parent-child tours.

"Today is the [first day of] May Day holiday, and I'm traveling with my family to Nansha [in Guangzhou] and Zhuhai," said a tourist from Hong Kong.

In addition to Guangdong Province, many other places near Guangdong on the mainland are also among the tourism options of people from Hong Kong and Macao.

"The number of residents from Hong Kong and Macao embarking on in-depth and long-distance tours to provinces on the mainland has seen a significant rise. We've seen an increase of about 20 percent compared to previous periods, with destinations like Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou emerging as popular choices," said Bao Haiyang, a customs officer with the border inspection station of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge.

According to authorities with the border inspection station of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the vehicle traffic is projected to hit its peak on May 3, or Sunday, with an estimated 28,000 vehicles expected to cross in a single day.

To cope with the high traffic volume, the border inspection station has implemented a specialized operational plan to manage the traffic influx and ensure a smooth and efficient travel experience for everyone.

Holiday travel surges as Hong Kong, Macao residents flock north during May Day holiday

Holiday travel surges as Hong Kong, Macao residents flock north during May Day holiday

The Beijing Space Computing Innovation Center, unveiled on June 29 in the capital city's satellite town in the northwestern district of Haidian, is expected to gather talent across sectors and drive growth in the space computing industry, according to industry insiders.

Jointly led by the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and leading enterprises in the space computing sector, the center will work on tackling common technological challenges such as large-scale space models, while advancing the construction of public platforms, the formulation of industry standards, and the commercialization of application scenarios.

The Beijing Space Computing Innovation Alliance was also launched at the same time, expected to bring together 108 diverse innovation entities ranging from universities and research institutes to state-owned enterprises and private companies to pool resources and strengthen industry collaboration.

"Space computing power in effect is a field with a very long industrial chain, covering commercial aerospace -- which has developed rapidly in recent years -- as well as chips, artificial intelligence, cloud-related technologies, and specific application scenarios -- integrating all of these together for organized research and development," said Fu Yunhao, CEO of Beijing Tiansuan Xinglian Technology Company.

"As satellite networks become increasingly advanced, they will inevitably host a variety of value-added services and applications. And these value-added services and applications will certainly require computing," said Wang Shangguang, dean of the School of Computer Science at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

Space computing power technologies refer to deploying computing facilities within an orbital satellite system so that massive volumes of data can be processed, stored and transmitted in orbit. Compared with traditional space information processing method, where data collected by satellites need to be sent back to the Earth for processing, space computing power technologies can break through latency bottlenecks and be applied to numerous scenarios such as remote sensing and monitoring.

Beijing's new space computing innovation center to attract talent, drive growth: insiders