Train services improve in snow-hit China

People trying to travel home for the Chinese new year after the worst winter storms in half a century crippled the country’s transport system were given hope today.

China’s Railway Ministry said train services had basically returned to normal on the Guangzhou to Beijing line, and extra trains were being put on the schedule.

“We’ll transport 400,000 passengers per day in the Guangzhou area,” the ministry said in a statement.

There was still a huge crowd at the city’s train station as anxious travellers - mostly migrant workers – try to get home for next week’s Lunar New Year.

The festival, which begins on February 7, is their only holiday from factory jobs.

Guangzhou, the capital of booming Guangdong province, is home to the factories that produce many of the world’s consumer items.

“There is no way I am going to make my train,” said Chen Yuejin, a 32-year-old textile factory worker trying to get to Wuhan in central China.

“It looks like I am going to be here for two days waiting to leave,” he said after surveying the crowd at the main Guangzhou train station.

Premier Wen Jiabao stopped at the station yesterday and encouraged the crowds to have patience, saying the government was working to improve things.

Both the Railway Ministry and the head of the China Meteorological Administration called on travellers to abandon plans to return to their hometowns for the holiday.

“For the sake of their safety, and relieving the stress on transport, I advise migrant workers to stay in the cities where they work,” administration chief Zheng Guogang was quoted as saying by the official China Daily newspaper.

The snow and ice storms, which are forecast to continue, have caused dozens of deaths, airport closures and blackouts during the past two weeks.

Half a million soldiers were called on to clear roads so that deliveries of food and coal could restart.

Much of the bad weather hit places in central and southern China that had no experience or equipment to deal with such conditions.

The blackouts cut electricity needed to run the trains, creating a massive backlog in Guangzhou.

Chinese railway officials had expected a record 178.6 million people – more than the population of Russia – to use the trains during the holiday.

But crowds at temporary shelters set up in Guangzhou had eased considerably by today.

The massive Canton Fair Exhibition Centre, which earlier this week was packed with people seeking temporary shelter as they waited for trains, was mostly empty.

One person still there was Zhang Yusheng, a 45-year-old lorry driver waiting with his wife to go home for the holiday to see their children.

“We came here last night because our train was supposed to leave this morning, but there is no way we were going to get on it. There were just too many people ahead of us. So we are just going to wait here until there is another train we can get on,” Zhang said, sitting on his luggage.

But while train service was getting back to normal in some areas, the official Xinhua News Agency said 12 national highways in six provinces remained impassable because of ice, and many of the cities in those provinces did not have proper snow removal equipment.

Xinhua said the People’s Liberation Army had handed out 419,000 quilts and 219,000 cotton-padded coats.