For the first time since placing limits on overseas travel in March 2020, China has reopened its borders to travelers from outside.
As the nation fights a surge in cases, there will be no longer be a requirement for incoming travelers to quarantine, marking a dramatic shift in the Covid policy.
They will still demand documentation of a PCR test that was negative and performed within 48 hours of the trip.
Many people who are ready to reunite with family have welcomed the move.
In the upcoming weeks, 400,000 individuals from Hong Kong are anticipated to fly into locations like Beijing and Xiamen, where there would be lengthy lines for flights.
On Sunday, double decker coaches packed with travellers arrived at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge to catch buses to the Guangdong province – among them were college students returning home.
One man told the BBC he hadn’t seen his extended family in five years and couldn’t hold back his excitement having just bought a ticket back to China.
A woman told news agency Reuters she had not seen her parents in years – despite one of them suffering from colon cancer – and said she was “so, so happy”.
The country’s reopening comes at the start of “chun yun”, the first period of Lunar New Year travel. Before the pandemic it was the largest annual worldwide migration of people returning home to spend time with family.
Two billion trips are expected to be made this Lunar New Year, double the number that travelled last year.
Li Hua, who travelled from the UK to China – where her family lives – for the festival said it had been “too long” since she had returned, “I’m so happy to be back, and breathe Chinese air. So happy, so happy”.
However, other people worry that expanding the borders will increase the spread of Covid-19.
At the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, some local bus drivers told the BBC that they are concerned they might contract the virus from arriving travelers and that their employers should give them better protection.
China had one of the strongest Covid health rules over the past three years, which resulted in repeated lockdowns, frequent testing procedures, and a substantial impact on the country’s economy.
Following widespread demonstrations around the nation in response to a fire in a high-rise building in the Xinjiang province that left 10 people dead, the government recently reversed course on that policy. Although authorities disputed this, many Chinese believed that the long-standing Covid restrictions were a factor in the deaths.
Hospitals and crematoriums have reportedly been overcrowded since China abandoned the main tenets of its Covid zero policy, but the nation has stopped disclosing its case numbers and only announced two deaths on Saturday.
The Chinese government deleted more than 1,000 social media accounts on the same day for criticizing how it handled the outbreak.
The anticipated surge in cases and travel out of China has prompted many countries – including the UK – to impose requirements for a negative COVID-19 test on people arriving from China, drawing the ire of the Chinese government.