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China Elevator Stories
How My Husband Got Stranded at Guangzhou Railway Station in 2008
In 2008, masses of people were stranded at Guangzhou railway station due to a blizzard. What happened next was a tragedy.
28/01/2014
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
Six years ago today, my husband was near Guangzhou railway station. He wasn’t the only one. It was the time of Chunyun (春运), the yearly mass migration that China experiences before Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival. Guangzhou and Beijing are the biggest transport hubs in mainland China, and every year, in the weeks leading up to the New Year, millions of people change trains at these two metropolises to get home in time to celebrate Spring Festival with their loved ones.
In 2008, my husband was one of those travelers. To get home, he could either take a train from Guangzhou to Changchun or one from Shenzhen to Shenyang. His family managed to get him a train ticket from Guangzhou to Changchun.
He first needed to travel from Shenzhen to Guangzhou. When he arrived in Guangzhou, he wasn’t alone—thousands of others were also changing trains there. Unfortunately, heavy snowstorms hit Guangzhou, a city in southern China that rarely sees snow. Trains and planes were grounded. People were stranded at the train station, desperately seeking shelter from the blizzard. My husband found himself waiting in a crowd of hundreds of thousands in the square outside the train station. Inside, around 170,000 people were already stranded, leaving no room to move forward or back. The army was deployed to maintain order. Luckily, my husband, being taller than most, found it easier to breathe in the densely packed crowd.
People began fainting and were carried away from the station or lifted above the crowd—similar to crowd surfing, but in a far more tragic context. Sadly, some didn’t survive.
For 12 hours, my husband stood in the crowd, moving forward only occasionally. After 12 hours without food or access to a toilet, he finally made it into the railway station. It took 12 hours to cover just 1.3 kilometers. Once inside, he had to wait another 15 hours for his train. There was no drinking water for sale, and empty instant noodle cups littered the station. Personnel had abandoned their posts, fearing the angry crowds. Eventually, my husband boarded a northeast-bound train.
The lower berths of the sleeper compartments had been converted into seats, with four people sharing a space meant for one. The aisles were packed with standing and sitting passengers. The trains were overcrowded, but people were relieved to finally be on their way.
Have you ever traveled during Chinese New Year? What was your experience like?