Word: stations
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Bedraggled and wet, Gao Biao stands in front of the Guangzhou train station with an umbrella in his hand and stares glumly at the crush of people in front of him. For the past year the 27-year-old has worked for a cosmetics factory in this southern Chinese city, and now he's trying to get home to see his mother near Suzhou in eastern China, 20 hours away by rail. He's going to miss his connection. Around him hundreds of people, all hoping to find seats, push toward an opening in the metal fence surrounding the station...
...more than half a million travelers who were stuck outside the station in the closing days of January after some of the most severe weather in decades brought China to a virtual standstill. Unusually frigid weather and heavy snowfall severed crucial transport arteries including major rail lines, highways and airports; power outages rolled across 17 provinces, forcing factories and businesses to close. The southern part of the country, which hadn't seen snow like this since 1954, was woefully unprepared. Even more northerly cities such as Shanghai, which is near the coast, were staggered by winter's wallop. At least...
...show how officials are trying to ease the crisis. The main China Central Television channel regularly airs a special program called "Battling the Blizzard." An often repeated news clip shows Premier Wen Jiabao picking up a bullhorn and apologizing to a crowd of disgruntled travelers trapped in the train station in Changsha, the icy capital of Hunan province. (Even the Premier was inconvenienced by the weather: his plane couldn't land in Changsha and was forced to divert to Wuhan, 180 miles away. Wen arrived in the capital by train.) "I'm very sorry that you are stranded...
...Daniel Moylan, deputy council leader for the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, whose controversial $30 million project to remake the busy Exhibition Road using shared-space principles begins in mid-2008. As well as being home to three major museums, the road will have to accommodate a subway station, bus routes, streams of traffic and the footfall of 10 million visitors a year. For Moylan, stripping out the jungle of street furniture will be a riposte to some decades-old assumptions about road use and the nature of risk. "Pavements were not designed to keep pedestrians safe," he says...
...Back near the station entrance, under giant signs proclaiming "Unify the motherland" and "Vitalize the nation," Gao is no more sanguine about his own chances of making it home. The hands of the giant neon green clock tick closer to his 9:56 p.m. departure time, but he gets no closer to the front of the line. "This is a real headache, but there's nothing I can do," he says. "I don't think I'll be getting on that train...