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Bad Weather Gathers More People at Guangzhou Station than Any Rock Concert

While most of us are already one month deep into 2016, the Chinese are still waiting for the Year of the Monkey to begin, something that will happen on February 8.
Guangzhou station crowds 1 photo
Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
As the Lunar New Year festivities are getting closer, the Chinese are getting ready to celebrate the occasion with their families. For those migrant workers making a living in the factories spread throughout this wealthier region of the country, this means traveling back to their homes and families deep within rural China.

Yesterday, a total number of 176,000 people were expected to go through the Guangzhou railway station, but a spell of severe weather in the region forced the authorities to cancel or delay at least 23 trains, stranding most of those travelers inside or around the station.

Fearing the worst, the Government sent in more than 2,600 security guards to keep the situation under control, while a level two emergency state was also declared. The main cause for worry for the authorities is a repeat of the Shanghai stampede on December 31, 2014, when dozens of people lost their lives, igniting an important political scandal.

With the weather showing little signs of amelioration, the number of those waiting for a way out of Guangzhou was still rather high on Tuesday morning: at least 55,000 travelers were still stranded and looking for a way home. Ironically enough, the highest risk for incidents to take place will be recorded when the railway traffic is restored. After such a long wait, people will understandably want to get on the trains as quickly as possible, and that’s when things could spiral out of control.

Another well-known fact is that Communist regimes don’t like large masses of people gathering around, as they fear the risk of an uprising becomes greater. That’s why a senior Communist party leader, Cheng Rugui, together with the Guangzhou police chief Xie Xiaodan, has also been dispatched to the scene, The Guardian reports.

As you can imagine, the poor weather didn’t do anything to alleviate the suffering of the travelers who were forced to wait outside. The Weibo network, China’s equivalent for Twitter, was filled with people venting their frustration, but that didn’t do anything to stop the freezing rain or get the trains going again.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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