Expo volunteers present bouquets of carnations to Shan Xinqin, 85, who visited the Expo yesterday, the day of the Double Ninth Festival. The festival is observed on the ninth day of the ninth month in the Chinese calendar. In 1989 the Chinese government decided that the Double Ninth Festival should be Seniors' Day. Volunteers from the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics prepared flowers and greeting cards for senior visitors yesterday.

MORE than a million people visited the Expo site yesterday, pushing the total number of Expo Shanghai visitors to over 64 million and breaking the records for daily attendance and the total number of visitors to a single World Expo.

Both records were set at the World Expo Osaka in 1970 which had 64.22 million visitors in total and 844,000 on a single day.

In Shanghai, the attendance reached 1.03 million at 9pm.

One volunteer, Zha Junyan, who had been sent to help maintain order in Zone C said it was almost impossible to keep standing among the floods of people.

The Oil Pavilion began asking visitors to stop waiting at 10:30am because waiting times had been estimated at over 12 hours. The waiting time was over 7 hours at the Saudi Arabia, Japan and Germany pavilions in the morning.

The daily parades on both the Pudong and the Puxi sites were cancelled because there were so many people on the roads.

Tangzijing Road near the UK and France pavilions were closed as a buffer area for visitors to take a rest.

Local TV and radio stations as well as websites, screens on public transport and broadcasts at Metro stations kept reminding people to choose another date to visit the Expo from noon after more than 700,000 visitors had entered the site.

Emergency plan

But people still kept coming. The attendance soared to 800,000 within 50 minutes from 700,000 and had reached 900,000 by 2:30pm.

However, the Expo site remained open to the public rather than prevent visitors from entering under a previousemergency plan.

Expo organizers had expected a huge number of visitors and had been prepared for the rush, said Qian Bojin, director of the Visitors Service Center.

Twenty buses were added to the site's 200 shuttle buses.

Tour buses were stopped at 10:30am to clear the roads for the shuttle buses. Buses for VIPs and Expo staff as well as police vehicles were also stopped.

Two container toilets were dispatched to the site for the first time since the Expo opened. They were each capable of receiving 20,000 people a day each.

Qian said almost all the Expo staff, including volunteers, were at work yesterday..

He said the main reason for the huge crowds of visitors was the result of many people grasping a final chance to visit the Expo.

Yesterday was also Chongyang, or Double Ninth Festival, the festival that honors the elderly.

Many families chose to take their elderly relatives to the Expo site.

The enthusiastic crowds also included many visitors from abroad.

More than 3,000 people joining Expo package tour from the United States, Mexico and Japan arrived in Shanghai yesterday, about 30 percent more than in previous days, said Yang Xiajie, an official at a checkpoint at Pudong International Airport.

He said there had been a marked increase in the number of foreign visitors over the past two weeks.

Outside the site, flocks of tourist buses packing with Expo visitors from outside Shanghai had blocked the city's highways and tunnels near the Expo site since morning.

This was despite the fact that, according to the city's traffic authority, all 24,000 traffic policemen were put on duty yesterday.

The parking lots around the Expo site were also packed with tourist buses. Many other buses were stopping on roads nearby so that their passengers could get out and make their way to the Expo on foot.

In the morning, the city government enacted the peak trafficprogram which had previously been planned to come into effect when daily attendances reached over 700,000, said Zhou Huai, top official of the trafficmanagement department at the Expo.

The Yaohua Road Station of Metro Line 8 that linked to the main entrance of the Pudong Expo site began limiting the number of people entering the station from 4pm as a huge number of visitors began to leave the site. Metro staff asked people to take buses and taxis instead.

Qian said he was expecting another huge number of visitors at the coming weekends, the last days that standard tickets holders will be able to enter the site.

• yesterday [´jestədi] n.&ad.昨天；前不久 (初中英语单词)
• finance [´fainæns] n.财政；金融 vt.资助 (初中英语单词)
• maintain [mein´tein] vt.维持；保持；继续 (初中英语单词)
• standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
• waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
• transport [træn´spɔ:t] n.运输；流放 (初中英语单词)
• previous [´pri:viəs] a.先，前，以前的 (初中英语单词)
• director [di´rektə] n.指导者；....长；导演 (初中英语单词)
• capable [´keipəbəl] a.有能力；能干的 (初中英语单词)
• abroad [ə´brɔ:d] ad.海外；到处；广泛 (初中英语单词)
• package [´pækidʒ] n.包(裹) vt.组装 (初中英语单词)
• mexico [´meksikəu] n.墨西哥 (初中英语单词)
• international [,intə´næʃənəl] a.国际的，世界的 (初中英语单词)
• despite [di´spait] prep.尽管 (初中英语单词)
• traffic [´træfik] n.交通，运输 (初中英语单词)
• program [´prəugræm] n.说明v.为...安排节目 (初中英语单词)
• management [´mænidʒmənt] n.管理；处理；经营 (初中英语单词)
• festival [´festivəl] n.节日；庆祝；欢庆 (高中英语单词)
• calendar [´kælində] n.日历；月历；历法 (高中英语单词)
• decided [di´saidid] a.明显的；决定的 (高中英语单词)
• senior [´si:niə] a.年长的 n.前辈 (高中英语单词)
• volunteer [,vɔlən´tiə] n.志愿者 v.自愿做 (高中英语单词)
• pavilion [pə´viljən] n.大帐篷；亭子 (高中英语单词)
• emergency [i´mə:dʒənsi] n.事变；紧急关头 (高中英语单词)
• enthusiastic [inθju:zi´æstik] a.热情的，热心的 (高中英语单词)
• tourist [´tuərist] n.游客，观光者 (高中英语单词)
• previously [´pri:viəsli] ad.预先；以前 (高中英语单词)
• economics [i:kə´nɔmiks, i:,-] n.经济学 (英语四级单词)
• arabia [ə´reibiə] n.阿拉伯 (英语四级单词)
• container [kən´teinə] n.容器；箱，匣 (英语四级单词)
• elderly [´eldəli] a. 较老的，年长的 (英语四级单词)