Transport resumes in frozen south China
Updated: 2008-02-06 10:29
Rail, highway and air transport systems paralyzed by freezing weather in southern China are recovering gradually ahead of the Lunar New Year, but millions of people are still cold and in the dark.
Latest information from Baiyun airport in Guangzhou, a major hub in southern China, said passenger flows reached a peak at the airport Tuesday.
"Except two airports, all airports across the Chinese mainland were open on Tuesday, though we still cancelled 27 flights, less than previous days, and all passengers stranded here were flown off by Tuesday," said a spokesman for the Baiyun airport.
Just days ago, Baiyun airport suffered massive flight delays or cancellations as half of China had been hit by the worst snowy weather in half a century, forcing many airports to close due to a lack of ice removal equipment.
As of noon on Tuesday, service at two railway stations in the southern city of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, was back to normal after 11 days of chaos, according to the Guangzhou Railway Group Corp., which is under the Ministry of Railways.
"About 3.5 million people left the province by train by Tuesday noon, and basically, all the passengers who held tickets but had been stranded at different railway stations have left," a spokesman said.
Guangzhou, with one of the biggest concentrations of the country's 200 million migrant workers, is the southern terminal of a trunk railway line that runs northward to Beijing.
About 350,000 train passengers left Beijing on Monday, 20,000 more than on Sunday, according to a spokesman with the Beijing Railway Bureau. He said that rail stations in the capital would probably see ridership peak on Tuesday.
Railway service operators in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Hefei said by 3 p.m. on Tuesday, except delays with a number of train services destined for southwest China, the other trains left or arrived on time.
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