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Chinese celebration of new year marred by cold snap

Chinese stand beside a roaring flame of burning incense sticks offered by visitors to usher in the Lunar New Year at the Lama Temple in Beijing, China, yesterday. PHOTO: EPA

China welcomed in the Year of the Rat yesterday with a bonanza of fireworks and festivals, but the celebrations for many were subdued as ferocious cold weather kept them from their families.

Explosions of color could be seen in the skies of Beijing and across China in a centuries-old fireworks tradition that is meant to scare off evil spirits but this year also sought to raise national morale after the horror cold snap.

The start of the new lunar year -- the most important national holiday for China's more than 1.3 billion people -- followed three weeks of ice and snow storms that crippled transport and power supplies in many cities.

With millions of migrant workers in China's southern and eastern economic hubs stranded by the weather crisis and unable to reunite with their families for the holiday, their plight was in the thoughts of those more fortunate.

"We are all a big family. Come on, let's fight this," a group of celebrities said in a weather rallying cry as part of the annual New Year's Eve extravaganza televised on national broadcaster, CCTV.

State media highlighted the continued travels this week of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) to areas that had suffered the most from the cold weather.

The official Xinhua news agency also ran a long article focusing on the more than 14 million migrant workers in the southern Guangdong Province and Shanghai on the east coast who could not get home to spend the New Year with their families.

"I miss my little daughter very much. She is only one-and-a-half years old," said Wang Xiaoli, a toy factory worker in Guangdong who had been desperate to return to her family over 2,000km to the north.

"When I arrived at the railway station a few days ago, I was astounded to see so many people waiting for trains and I couldn't get through the crowd," she said.

With the worst of the weather over, Xinhua reported on Wednesday that power had been restored to 162 of the 170 worst-hit counties, but that many people were still suffering.

"The world's most populous nation began its weeklong Lunar New Year holiday on Wednesday, but hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- of people will probably spend the biggest festival of the year in the cold and dark," Xinhua said.

In Chenzhou, a city of about 4 million in central China's Hunan Province that had suffered blackouts for 12 days, many residents remained without power.
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