More than 100,000 are stuck at a train station in southern China after snow and icy weather affected the transport taking hundreds of millions of people home for Chinese New Year celebrations next week.The station in the city of Guangzhou was packed full and huge queues amassed outside, with many passengers waiting for more than ten hours in the snow following the delaying of at least 32 trains.Authorities have declared a “level two emergency” and deployed more than 5,200 security guards, said local police.The head of Guangzhou police Xie Xiaodan and Chen Rugui, a senior Communist party leader, were also sent to the area to try to avert rioting and stampedes, reported the Guardian.Central China is experiencing some of its coldest weather in years, meaning many trains have been delayed by snow.The chaos was partially blamed on people arriving up to two days ahead of their journey, with passengers being advised to only show up at the station three hours before their service leaves, reported the South China Morning Post.Police asked to passengers to check their train details online and avoid “blindly heading to the station to wait for trains.”
Roads around the station were sealed off two days ago and taxis are banned from driving nearby.The Lunar New Year sees tens of millions of Chinese migrant workers travel across country back to their home towns over a 40 day period which is described as the largest annual human migration on earth.There are almost 3 billion passenger trips per year, rising by about 4 percent each year, with vast swaths of those passengers being migrant workers returning to their hometowns.Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong province, China’s most populous province and the epicenter of its massive manufacturing industry. Of around ten million people living in the city, three to four million are migrant workers servicing the region’s 60,000-odd factories making everything from Nike shoes to iPhones.Across China this new year there will be about 2.48 billion trips by road, 332 million railway journeys, 54.55 million trips by air and 42.8 million by water, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planner.
source:Vice News
