China - snow (rail-related stories)

[John Ashworth]

Fresh snow adds to China freeze

More snow fell over parts of China already crippled by severe weather, as President Hu Jintao urged miners to help end power shortages.

Some railways began to operate again, but many people remained unable to board packed trains to return home for next week's New Year holiday.

Central and southern areas are experiencing the worst snow in decades.

Storms have flattened houses, downed power lines and delayed vital deliveries of food and coal.

With millions reported to be without water and electricity, the Chinese government is working hard to convince people it is in control of the situation.

On Wednesday, President Hu Jintao visited a coal mine in Shanxi province.

"Disaster-hit areas need coal and the power plants need coal," he told miners, according to Xinhua news agency.

"I pay an early New Year call here to those miners who will not go back home to celebrate the Spring Festival for (the sake of) the coal production," he said.

'How long?'

Snow has been falling in central and southern regions for over two weeks.

It has left dozens of people dead and damaged swathes of agricultural land, triggering warnings of food shortages due to wrecked crops.

It has also hit the busiest travelling season, the run-up to Lunar New Year on 7 February.

People, many of them poor migrant workers, have been stranded at stations across the region, while major highways have also been blocked.

On Wednesday trains began operating out of Guangzhou, where hundreds of thousands of people have been stranded.

Daily passenger capacity was up to 400,000, official media said, but huge crowds still remained at the station.

Graphic designer Cheng Xia, 28, was not optimistic.

"The weather is still bad," he told the Associated Press news agency. "Once I get on a train, who knows how long I'll be on it? We could get stuck for three or four days."

Officials had urged people not travel - a plea that many seemed to be heeding, Xinhua news agency said.

Still more snow was expected over the next few days and temperatures were expected to remain below freezing, forecasters said.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/a ... 221456.stm

Published: 2008/02/01 05:19:13 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

[John Ashworth]

On Wednesday trains began operating out of Guangzhou, where hundreds of thousands of people have been stranded. Daily passenger capacity was up to 400,000, official media said, but huge crowds still remained at the station.

I find it quite staggering to imagine a daily passenger capacity of 400,000 - and this at a time when the railways are operating way below their normal capacity due to the weather. Daily passenger figures of several hundred thousand can be found on a few commuter systems in major cities (London, for example), but presumably this figure in China is for the main passenger network, as news articles refer to people travelling home for the new year holiday.

[John Ashworth]

China rail traffic picks up but backlog remains

01/02/08

CHANGSHA, China (AFP) — China's rail traffic was back on track Friday but massive passenger backlogs and more severe winter weather will prevent millions from going home for the annual holidays.

The country's transport system had been effectively paralysed since last weekend due to the worst winter storms in half a century, but airports, train stations and bus depots began rumbling back to life on Thursday.

"Nationwide, 95 percent or more of the rail system has returned to normal and traffic is being expedited," Railway Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping was quoted as saying by the Beijing Times.

However, millions of migrant workers still trying to get back for traditional Lunar New Year family gatherings faced either more waiting or the prospect of a holiday away from home.

The China Meteorological Administration said nine of the worst affected provinces in central, eastern and southern China faced further moderate to heavy snowstorms and freezing rain Friday.

Officials in Guangdong said 11.2 million workers in the southern province had given up hope of returning for next week's holiday due to massive traffic snarls leading northward to other provinces, Xinhua news agency said.

The gridlock has led to tense scenes across the affected region as the backlog of desperate travellers has built up, forcing authorities to beef up security at airports and train and bus stations to keep order.

The government faces other headaches as well, including restoring food and energy supplies to large areas at a time when output typically falls due to the holidays.

Damage to crops has raised fears that it could further stoke already historically high inflation -- a sensitive topic for the government due to its potential for triggering unrest.

"The impact of the snowfall on winter crop production is extremely serious. The impact on fresh vegetables in some central and eastern regions has been catastrophic," Chen Xiwen, director of Agriculture Ministry department, was quoted as saying by the China Daily.

Officials have said 11 provinces have seen sharp spikes in vegetable prices, with costs doubling in some areas.

"The government should have prepared for such situations earlier," Li Xiangxiang, 23, told AFP as she angrily picked over high-priced vegetables in a market in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha.

"I think the government just wasn't ready."

President Hu Jintao visited a coal mine in northern Shanxi province late Thursday, urging miners to increase production to head off the country's worst power crisis in memory.

"While giving priority to safety, we have to dig up and supply more coal in order to relieve supply shortages, protect normal economic activity and allow the people a happy Lunar New Year festival," Hu urged the miners.

The transport chaos has strangled distribution of coal, source of three-fourths of China's energy, causing blackouts in 17 provinces, according to reports.

The government said Thursday the nation's stockpile of coal for power generation had dropped to a mere six-day supply.

Copyright © 2008 AFP.

[John Ashworth]

Psychologists treat China's stranded at rail stations

Thu Jan 31, 4:57 AM ET

Railway passengers stranded by snow in east China's Zhejiang province are receiving counselling from psychologists in the crowded station waiting hall, state media said on Thursday.

Snow, sleet and ice blanketing much of central, eastern and southern China have killed dozens, cut power and hobbled transport ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which starts on Wednesday, leaving millions stranded at railway stations.

The municipal government of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang, had set up a team of 16 psychologists to provide "crisis intervention counselling to anxious travellers" waiting to go home, Xinhua news agency said.

"Weariness and anxiety could lead to the malfunction of people's immune system and result in psychological problems," Zhao Guoqiu, a psychologist who heads the team, was quoted as saying.

"It is very necessary to provide psychological help to the stranded who are always under great pressure."

He told passengers it was useless to cry and instead encouraged them to turn to other means of transport to get home. "Listening, smiles and patience are all effective measures to calm them."

Chen Wendou, a passenger heading for central Hubei province, said she was greatly relieved after talking with Zhao.

"After several nights waiting in the cold waiting hall, I was at the verge of collapse," he was quoted as saying.

(Reporting by Nick Macfie; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited.

[John Ashworth]

Migrant workers bear the brunt of China's transport chaos as cold snap continues


Tania Branigan in Guangzhou
Tuesday February 5, 2008
The Guardian

China travel chaos, Guangzhou station
A sick passenger is passed over waiting crowds at Guangzhou railway station in southern China. Photograph: Sun Tao/Getty Images


It should have been her last journey. Zhao Baoqin was going home: not just for the new year, like so many migrant workers, but for good. She had laboured for years in a wool factory, paying her daughter's way through school and then university. Now the new graduate had promised to support her mother in turn.

But Zhao lies unconscious in a hospital in Guangzhou, her bones broken and her face purple with bruises, after falling from a bridge on Saturday in a desperate push to get inside the packed railway station.

Outside, the temperature is a mild 8C (46F), but the bitter weather plaguing eastern and central China for weeks has wreaked havoc here, too.

Ice and snow storms paralysed much of the country's transport system at its busiest time - the new year, migrant workers' one chance to return home to see their families. Though trains are running again, the passengers who manage to depart are swiftly replaced by thousands more from the factories of China's southern manufacturing heartland.

The state media say Beijing has launched "a war against the weather" and Guangzhou is its southern front. The street to the station is barricaded, with hundreds of soldiers and police stewarding travellers from one choke point to the next.

The passengers look like refugees; laden with cheap cases, sagging boxes and anxiety. In each surge forward, they jostle and shove. Even the new-found city swagger of young men dissolves in the steady drizzle.

Zhao arrived here with friends on January 26, as the numbers at the station began to swell to 700,000 or more. They queued in the rain and slept on the street, but the 45-year-old was buoyant as she talked about her happiness at fulfilling her dream of helping her daughter and leaving factory life.

Anyuan village in Gansu, north-west China, has little to offer its residents; no wealth, not even a reliable water supply. But for Zhao it was her only real home and she was determined to make the 34-hour train journey.

Zhao's cousin Yang Xiaoying, also from Gansu, said: "After five days, we really couldn't find any other way to get in to the station - there were too many people and it was just too crowded. So she handed her bag from one bridge to the other and I was just about to say 'wait a second - I'll help you across'. But she had already fallen.

"The government didn't do a good job. There was no discipline; no order. When they opened the gates, people just went through in a flood. Those who ... didn't have strength were just crushed. When she fell, if I hadn't cried out, she would have been crushed to death and no one would even have realised."

Zhao's family dare not tell her parents why she will not be home for the new year. They do not know if she will go home at all. "I'm illiterate but she brought me out here to work and treated me like her sister. She loved me and she helped me. Now I'm feeling very lonely and scared, worrying whether she will wake or not," Yang said.

Doctors told them Zhao's prospects are uncertain and say just stabilising her condition will cost 80,000 yuan (more than £5,000); eight times as much as she earned in a whole year of 14- or 15-hour days. "We have brought money and other people have given, but we only have 27,000. Her home town is poor. If we don't get enough money, we will probably have to give her up," said Zhao's friend Wei Erling, a taxi driver.

"She's lived a very simple life; she's never had luxurious food or clothes, because she wanted to support her daughter. Of course, if she was someone 'important', people would pay more attention to what happened. The government and railway are taking no responsibility."

The crush has now eased around the station, with extra police and soldiers drafted in to control the flow after the death of a woman trampled as travellers rushed for a train at the weekend.

Hundreds of thousands of workers also abandoned travel plans and applied for ticket refunds. But many appear to have been drawn back by the very improvements in the situation.

At the end of the long road that leads to the station, a loudspeaker van blares forlornly: "Dear passengers! Please stay in Guangzhou for spring break! You will have a nice festival in Guangzhou and are very welcome!"

Few can hear it over the shrill police whistles and the rumble of suitcase wheels.

[John Ashworth]

Crushed aboard, four to a bunk, the lucky few head home


In the second of her special dispatches on the trail of Chinese migrant workers battling against the snow and ice to get back to their families for new year, Tania Branigan reports from frozen Hunan province

Wednesday February 6, 2008
The Guardian

They open the gates and the tide sweeps out: down the concourse, into the underpass, running along the platform. Shouting, barging, sprinting for a place. The air tastes of the soot from trains and the adrenaline that fuels Guangdong's factories seven days a week, 50 weeks a year. But this is new year.

They're free and heading home. They thrust their way into the carriages and clamber on to the three-tier sleeping berths; four to a bench at ground level, one or two hunched up on each of the middle and top bunks, with more passengers jammed into the narrow aisles. There's elation and exhaustion in their voices, the chatter and bickering mixed with yawns and snores as the train pulls out, leaving faces three deep on the platform.

"This coach is the worst of all," mutters a vendor as she somehow rams her trolley, laden with strawberries and tiny oranges, past the corner where Xiao Ou squats with a cigarette.

He waited four days in Guangzhou and was rewarded with a ticket but not a seat for the six-hour journey to Hunan province.

"No problem - we know we're going home," the 55-year-old construction supervisor said. "It was really tough a few days ago. Today it's kind of comfortable in comparison. And I'm going to see my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and my wife. I've worked away from home for 18 years. I call them regularly, but it's not like getting together, having really deep conversations about the last year, how they feel and what their plans are.

"I thought I might not make it home and would have to spend spring festival with friends in Guangzhou. But it's nature's disaster, no one can avoid it."

The snow and ice that have assailed eastern and central China in recent weeks have blighted the holidays of millions of migrant workers, causing some to cancel trips home and delaying many others.

But there's a collective gasp as the train pulls out of a long tunnel and the passengers see the white hills of Hunan for the first time. Many remark on the beauty of the snow that has caused them such trouble.

The mood is as warm as the temperature inside the carriage; people share snacks and stories, even helping neighbours to remove shoes as they swap places on the berths.

"I guess everyone on this train feels lucky," said Zheng Jinfang, enduring a 16-hour ride home to Jiangxi province with her boyfriend.

"We'd seen the horrible scenes on TV, so I was really scared. I thought, I'm such a tiny, skinny person I might be knocked over in the crowds at the station. My family told us maybe we should just stay put. But I guessed because spring festival was so close, a lot of people might just give up. That's why I came today."

At 22 she faces at least five or 10 years more in the factories of Guangdong before she can hope to return to her village permanently. "I miss everything about home: my friends, my family, the way people behave. But the first two years were the worst. I come back again and again because I've got used to the work and I know people now. It's convenient."

Like many of the young women on board, she has acquired urban polish: make-up, a smart haircut, a bright red and white sweater. "I send most of my money home, but if I have free time I like shopping," she admits.

"Sometimes I think about the foreigners wearing the clothes we make. The material is quite expensive and I think: I'm working here, but I can't afford to wear these things. But I'm a migrant worker. I know a lot of things are unfair."