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SLOW TRAIN COMING
Feb. 2nd, 2008 01:57 pmCurrent weather in Hong Kong: rainy and 9ºC. Which I know doesn’t impress some of you, but by local standards it’s chilly. And has been for the past ten days or so. We set an island record the other night. One interesting thing about HK is that our winters are only as cold as whatever surplus cold air north China cares to export down to us.
And as you may or may not know, China currently has more than enough to go around. Which is why the big headlines all this week has been the chaos at the Guangzhou train station.
Which looks like this.
With the trains pretty much shut down due to blizzards and subsequent power outages, up to 800,000 people, many of them migrant workers, hoping to get home to visit their families for the Lunar New Year (which starts this Thursday) got stranded in Guangzhou alone. That’s down to about 400,000 now, but many of these people have spent four or five days outside in the cold rain, getting by on instant noodles whose price went up 40% as soon as the line started backing up.
And that’s just in Guangzhou.
And the forecast? More snow.
Home and dry,
This is dF
And as you may or may not know, China currently has more than enough to go around. Which is why the big headlines all this week has been the chaos at the Guangzhou train station.
Which looks like this.
With the trains pretty much shut down due to blizzards and subsequent power outages, up to 800,000 people, many of them migrant workers, hoping to get home to visit their families for the Lunar New Year (which starts this Thursday) got stranded in Guangzhou alone. That’s down to about 400,000 now, but many of these people have spent four or five days outside in the cold rain, getting by on instant noodles whose price went up 40% as soon as the line started backing up.
And that’s just in Guangzhou.
And the forecast? More snow.
Home and dry,
This is dF
