Epic Snowstorms Slam Southern, Central China
Winter storms cause $2.5 billion in damage.
Jan. 28, 2008— -- Some of the heaviest snowfalls seen in 50 years have slammed huge swaths of southern and central China. The winter storms have led to two dozen deaths and disrupted rail and air traffic for more than two weeks during the busiest holiday travel season of the year. Critical supplies of food and coal remain stuck on icy roads.
The vice director at the Beijing West Railway Station Yao Hongren said, "There is still no sign of the weather getting better, so we'll be kept under great pressure. It's a natural disaster, and we're doing everything possible..."
In the southern city of Guangzhou, 200,000 people waited outside a packed train terminal, with the number of stranded passengers expected to reach up to 600,000.
From now until the Chinese New Year, which falls on Feb. 7 — the equivalent of Labor Day in the United States — tens of millions of people flood out of the big cities and head home.
As many as 178 million take trains during the Chinese New Year holiday — more than half the entire U.S. population. Of those passengers, 70 percent are migrant workers who are only afforded this one vacation a year.
One man, who only gave his name as Wei, said he sees precious time slipping away.
"There's a Chinese saying," he said, that when people are anxious to go home, "they want to travel as swiftly as an arrow."
Instead, many Chinese waited restlessly at rail stations Monday while a blizzard buried their passage.
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