Chinese PM to Train Passengers Through Bullhorn: ‘I Apologize’
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 01.29.08 | 1:35 PM ET
That’s right. In what reporters are terming a rare move, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited a Hunan train station and apologized for the travel chaos caused by historic winter storms and power outages around the nation. He used a bullhorn.
“We are currently trying our best to repair the system,” he said. Hundreds of thousands of rail passengers in the country have been stranded at a critical travel time leading up to Chinese New Year celebrations. How bad is it? “In Guangzhou, the booming southern industrial city, authorities said they expected as many as 600,000 train passengers to be stranded there by Monday,” the New York Times reports. “The police were being deployed around the city’s central railroad station as a precaution to keep order.” That’s bad.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Jen 01.30.08 | 12:20 PM ET
I think the saddest part is the families being separated. That and the collapsing buildings.
Although I also have a sick curiousity…as a Canadian girl I’ve always wondered if snow really can crush a house.
AppetiteforChina 01.31.08 | 12:20 PM ET
I was on one of the first trains to be stuck, a Beijing-Hong Kong train that got delayed over 24 hours. We also had heat and electricity shut off, while the train sat in a snow storm. The crew’s handling of the situation and sanitation onboard left much to be desired.
But at least I made it to my destination, which is better than the situation facing the hundreds of thousands stuck in Guangzhou.
Snow can crush badly constructed buildings and old shacks, which dotted the Hunan countryside that I saw from my train.