MORE than 620,000 people visited cemeteries to honor their deceased love ones in Shenzhen during the three-day Qingming Festival holiday, the city’s civil affairs bureau said yesterday.

There were 337,000 visits during yesterday’s peak of the Qingming Festival or Tomb-Sweeping Day, and a flow of 60,033 cars to the city’s three major cemeteries including Jitian Cemetery in Buji, Bao’en Fudi in Xili and Overseas Chinese Cemetery in Dapeng Bay, said Lin Qingquan, head of the city’s administration of funeral services.

More people took flowers instead of firecrackers and paper money as offerings to the deceased, Lin said.

The administration organized 100 social workers and volunteers at Jitian Cemetery and Bao’en Fudi to provide flowers for visitors.

Traffic police said there were 3,273 accident reports between April 3 and 5, similar to last year.

Meanwhile, online remembrance is booming with more than 50,000 visits in the past five days at www.eeloves.com, a site established four years ago and sponsored by the civil affairs bureau. It now has 80,000 online memorial halls and had 10 million visits.

The city also saw a surge of vehicles returning to Shenzhen via expressways from Shantou and Huizhou and neighboring Fujian Province.

Shenzhen’s border checkpoints handled around 2.5 million travelers between April 2 and 5, sources from the exit and entry inspection station said yesterday. About 680,000 travelers crossed the border yesterday alone.