The Continuing Saga in Southern China

Early this morning, I hopped in the car and headed north on a work related trip.  My driver told me it might take longer than usual, as the highway we were getting on was the only highway headed north that remained open to traffic.  The usual 3 hr trip, might take 4...just what I wanted to hear. 

There were definitely more cars and trucks on the road than usual, but nothing that slowed us down.  We arrived about 15 minutes later than usual...so I count myself lucky.  Once up there (near Heyuan), the temperatures were decidedly lower, with a biting wind coming from the north.  We estimated the temps to be around 4C...and with the wind, it was easily 1C or 2C. 

The situation in Guangzhou, has either gotten worse, or it has gotten better.  Glowing reports from the local media paint the picture a bit rosier than what I suspect...

Today Guangzhou Railway Station is getting back to normal and 98 trains will start off, with some 200,000 passengers on their journey. It is estimated that all the 600,000 passengers stranded in Guangzhou will all be able to get on their way back home in 3 days.

Indeed...as they say, people will be able to get on their way in 3 days...that would be Sunday.  This all started last Sunday...so people would have been stranded one week.  Now, that could either be rosy...or it could be silly.

Australian television showed video of people jostling and fighting for queue rights and trampling barracades, while police pleaded with people on bullhorns to 'remain calm.'   And there was this from their website...

State television has described the hardships, but reportedly stresses stories of tireless railway workers, police and officials and the six electricity workers who died while repairing power lines.

Live-to-air updates on relief efforts have also featured an uplifting song, with the lines "We all belong to one family, a loving family".

And Fox News reports this...

One desperate mob stormed a city bus in the main southern city of Guangzhou, mistakenly thinking it was taking passengers to the day's last departing trains. They pried open doors and elbowed their way inside as helpless police yelled, "It's not going to the station!"

I don't want to say 'I told you so'...but, this is what I fear.  What happens when they start loading up people in three days...after they have already been there for a week?  The scenes on Australian television were eerily what I suspected would happen; crushing of crowds, trampling...chaos.  The feelings are starting to come out in the newspapers, slowly (such as the man above).  Frustrations will mount, and criticism of the handling of this will be loud.  You only need to watch the television when they show a line of PLA soldiers with shovels, scooping snow off the roadway.  Uhhh...why don't you have a plow or grater for that??  Because, they are completely unprepared.  Thousands of miles of roads and railways impassible due to snow...and they hire a load of soldiers to scoop snow with shovels.  It's the Chinese way.

From our office, I received an email asking employees to volunteer clothing, blankets, food, money or time to assist those stranded at the train station.  The Chinese are not the most 'samaritan' of people, so it will be interesting to see what the response is to Guangzhou's time of need during this special time of the year.

Finally, when traveling back from the north, we stopped at a truck stop for a quick bio-break.  As we pulled into our stop and the driver headed for the facilities, I stepped out to check out what was going on around us...and where the trucks were parked were piles of snow, which had fallen off the parked trucks that had just come from the north.  When my driver came back, I flagged him down and showed him the snow...

It was the first time in his life, he had ever seen it.  Pretty cool...