Driving sleet, freezing temperatures and a blanket of snow across southern China have paralysed trains and aircraft, stranding tens of millions of people trying to get home for the biggest holiday in the Chinese calendar.
The worst weather in 50 years pummelled swaths of central, southern and eastern China as migrant workers and students, business travellers and officials assigned to provincial postings battled for tickets to join their families for the lunar new year holiday.
The human tide strains public transport every year even though the authorities pull dozens of extra trains into service and lay on additional flights to try to cope. With new year's day falling on February 7 this year, the bad weather has swept China just as the number of travellers is reaching its peak.
The China Meteorological Administration issued a red alert warning of more snowstorms and blizzards in central and eastern China, particularly around Shanghai, the country's commercial hub. It placed a notice on the central forecast website that said: “Cut unnecessary outdoor activities.”
Among the worst-hit cities is southern Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province that borders Hong Kong. The province is one of China's most important manufacturing regions, with thousands of factories making everything from T-shirts to electronics staffed by millions of migrant workers from poorer inland provinces.
Hundreds of thousands of those workers, many with young children, found themselves stranded at the Guangzhou railway station after snowstorms snapped power lines to passenger trains from neighbouring Hunan province, an important hub for trains on the main line between Guangzhou and Beijing.
Officials struggled to control an estimated 200,000 travellers at the station — a number expected to swell to 600,000 over the next couple of days. Temporary shelter was being arranged for the migrant workers in schools and conventions centres. Soldiers were deployed to stand guard around the station and police barked orders through bullhorns to try to maintain order.
Notice boards inside the station were a sea of red, showing that almost every train had been cancelled. Radio announcements urged people not to go to the station since most trains had been cancelled and tickets were no longer being sold until new year's day.
Liu Si, who hoped to travel back to the western metropolis of Chongqing, had been stuck at the station for days. “The number 1059 train to Chongqing didn't go on the 26th, it didn't go on the 27th and there's no way it's going today on the 28th.”
With officials warning that it could take until the end of the week to work through the backlog of passengers, Mr Liu was not optimistic of spending the festival with his family. “I've been in Guangdong a decade. I've never spent a Chinese New Year here. This year I might have to. It just won't feel right.”
The freakish weather has already affected 67 million people and economic losses so far have been placed at 18.2 billion yuan (£1.3 billion).

More:
China transport meltdown as 200,000 people camp out for train which won't arrive for a WEEK

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1811

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The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

I was in China during their New Year holiday in 1996, traveling with a college buddy who was on the same exchange program as me, and we both were dumbfounded at the way Chinese lower classes behave in transportation hubs. This is no lie, there were officials seated in chairs high above ticket window lines at train stations in Nanking, and also Shanghai when we were there, and my friend and I likened them to line judges at a tennis match. If I remember correctly they had whistles and barked commands when the lines got unruly. One thing that was unforgettable was the crowding around the ticket window when it was your turn to order. It was a shoving match, I literally had to box out the Chinese natives while my friend ordered our tickets, through our knowledge of Chinese characters from knowing Japanese, it was not an impossible communication divide, but when you factor in the line judges and the boxing out, it made for an experience I will never forget. We actually got stuck because of no available train tickets heading south, when we were in Hangzhou, and ended up flying on Dragon Air to Hong Kong. This was the only way to avoid the mass travel and confusion that was part of the normal holiday travel - I can not imagine being stuck in one of their train stations for days.

That shows The CCP's corruptness and incapability!

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http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/...s-boycott.html

Corruption shouldn't be discounted; however, China has a larger middle class that can now afford travel. What is needed is more infrastructure for a larger population. The needs of China as a country to meet the wants of it's growing population with it's growing affluence will require more trains, planes, and automobiles.

If this mess were put in scale the US has probably had something similar which afterwards didn't change much except in building a new bridge, or hiway, or something else which probably involved some kind of corruption either with the solution or the original problem.

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*Apathy rules

*unless apathy doesn't rule