Holidays are always a difficult time for commuters as they rush to get back home to spend the time with their families. But China always has a penchant for taking such instances to the extreme, and this time is no different as more than 30,000 people were stranded at China's Guangzhou Railway after snow delayed at least 23 trains.
Thousands braved long queues, delays and sold out tickets in the 40-day travel frenzy surrounding the Lunar New Year, also known as the Spring Festival Season, leaving authorities to take emergency measures to "avoid the dangers of overcrowding," according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
There were conflicting reports about how many people were actually stuck in the station, with Guangzhou Railway Corp saying that 38,000 passengers were stuck while China's People Daily had that number at more than 100,000.
Over 100k passengers trapped in Guangzhou Railway Station on Mon, due to train delays in #SpringFestival travel rush pic.twitter.com/DcajMP3oAq
— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) February 2, 2016
"Guangzhou area's chunyun (Spring Festival migration) control center inspects and estimates that there are 38,000 waiting passengers in the area," the Guangzhou Railway Corp said Tuesday. "An earlier rumor on the Internet that there's a gathering of 100,000 is untrue."
This week's poor weather did more than impact the railways. Flight delays and cancellations were rampant on Sunday, with the airport in the city of Wuhan closing down entirely on Sunday, while a trickle of flights were delayed or cancelled on Monday.
With little else to turn to, stranded travellers took to social media to vent their frustrations, according to The Guardian.
"Just getting back home is so difficult," one user wrote on Weibo, the Chinese-equivalent of Twitter. "People have to stand in the rain for more than 10 hours."
An estimated 2.9 billion trips will be made this year in China.
