He said he also had to deal with the transfer of a property certificate that had become overdue in May 2022. Coronavirus travel restrictions prevented him from settling the matter earlier.

Hong Kong-mainland China border ‘to reopen earliest January 10’

Ng was among about 100 people at a Sheung Wan service centre on Friday morning getting their travel documents processed to cross the border.

Scores of Hong Kong residents have flooded application centres to renew their mainland travel permits since the government announced its intention to resume quarantine-free travel with the mainland in January.

Other people at the Sheung Wan centre said they were renewing their mainland travel permits just to be prepared.

Physiotherapist Liu Giyu, 28, who was born in Hong Kong and grew up in the United States, wanted to apply for a mainland travel permit to visit Shanghai and Beijing.

“I really want to see what mainland China is like with my own eyes,” she said. “I’ve only heard about it from other people.”

Kindergarten teacher Yu Fung-ling, 62, had no travel plans yet, but wanted to get her permit early.

“I might visit relatives in Zhongshan or travel, but it all depends on the Covid-19 situation on the mainland,” she said.

Sze Lai-shan, deputy director of the NGO Society for Community Organisation, said many Hong Kong residents had overdue bureaucratic matters to deal with on the mainland and looked forward to the border reopening.

She said thousands were eager to help family members on the mainland apply for one-way permits under the scheme which allows up to 150 mainlanders a day to settle in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong residents often needed to be present to prove their relationship with the mainland applicants, she said.

Mainland authorities to start issuing visas for Hong Kong entry from January 8

Homemaker Cindy Zuo, 36, has been in Hong Kong with her six-year-old daughter through the pandemic, while her husband remained in her hometown Shunde, in Guangdong.

She said she wanted to travel to the mainland to help her husband secure a one-way permit.

“Sometimes I feel that the relationship between my daughter and her father has become distant as they haven’t met for too long,” she said.

She also wanted to bury her late mother’s ashes in her hometown to fulfil the older woman’s wishes. Her 70-year-old mother died in Hong Kong in 2019.

But Zuo said she had no plans to go before Lunar New Year, as she was worried about the raging Covid-19 infections on the mainland.

Hong Kong ministers begin planning for full reopening of mainland China border

Some Hong Kong residents said that after three years of travel restrictions, they were in no hurry to visit the mainland.

Full-time single parent Wei Qiang, 62, said the border restrictions lasted so long that he had become used to being in Hong Kong.

During the two decades he spent running a massage parlour in the city, the divorced man always imagined returning to the mainland for a less hectic life.

But now he looked forward to remaining in the city with his two sons, aged 11 and 13. The boys lived in Shenzhen before the pandemic, but moved to Hong Kong after the border closed to continue attending school.

“Things like this might strike again in the future,” he said, referring to the possibility of another outbreak that could close the border again.