The First Day of Spring

Tuesday, 5. February 2008, 06:09:51

Did you know...?

It is the first day of Spring according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar...

But Jack Frost has China in a deathly grip. It is the worst winter in 100 years.

It has been termed 'catastrophic' with billions in losses and hundreds of thousands of houses crushed under the weight of snow.

8,000 trains were trapped and held immobile by ice and snow. Some transmission towers were toppled by the weight of ice on the lines.

Some cities have been without water and electricity for about a week so far.

The capacity of the Guanzhou train station is 27 million passengers per year. This is about 74,000 per day. The waiting crowd reached 800,000 people!

Some people were trapped on trains for several days. They were trying to get back to their home town for festival days. When the trains started moving under diesel power, they had taken out the sleeping cars and added 'hard seat' cars to handle the huge numbers of people waiting to board the trains. At least one person was trampled to death by the crowds trying to push their way on to the trains. Both the police and army are out in numbers trying to control the miserable, freezing, hungry crowds.

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

a lonely ten thousand moreGetting to know you. (ESL)

Comments

yes, it is really bad. our news reports show some pictures... kind of ruined the new year for everyone there. devastating.

By I_ArtMan, # 5. February 2008, 08:13:28

this sounds terrible. how is it near you?

By Capegirl, # 5. February 2008, 11:03:42

Strangely enough, north eastern part of China, my hometown, where usually had lots of snow, have very little white color this year.. Even my hometown Harbin, which was nicknamed as 'Ice City', didn't see any snowflakes since I got back from Shanghai. This disaster made one thing clear, though- Chinese people will do ANYTHING in order to go home to join their family reunion.. 2.3billion times of people will be transported during this time of every year..

By AzureTimm, # 5. February 2008, 13:40:07

sry to hear that Jon, hope all is well with you...and with you as well timm...and i also hope that all is well with sugarwinx too, as she was going to china (i believe) to celebrate chinese new year.

Happy Year Of The Rat, Timm, Jon, & Sugarwinx

By SqueakeyCat, # 5. February 2008, 22:32:47

I am in south China, either in Buji, the city on Shenzhen's northern border, or Zhuhai, the city on Macao's northern border.

It is cold here, mostly because these cities are south of the 'city heated' line. Cities north of the line are provided with steam heat from central furnaces. cities south of the line are on their own, with residents heating their own homes however they can. So when this storm came to cities south of the line, they suffered a lot since many residents depended on electrical heating. 100,000 people were out repairing the electric lines. The authorities will first repair the low voltage systems in order to get power into the homes. Later they will repair the high voltage lines to the factories.

Thanks for visiting!

By Autumn21, # 6. February 2008, 03:13:20

I have learned about that from our local Danish media.

Horrible conditions. Hope you'll cope after all.

By ricewood, # 13. February 2008, 15:42:33

Today the sun was feeling warm. Wow, Spring is coming! I am tired of feeling cold. The winter was colderr here than usual, but nothing like the terrible conditions up north.

;-D I missed the fireworks shows and got some Roman Candles and shot them of with family. Yahoo!

;-D Oh well... Back to work.

By chinajon, # 18. February 2008, 10:31:21

Is it reall Spring?