A BLOG-REPORT FROM THE GUANGZHOU TRAIN STATION, where half a million people are stranded. Honestly, it doesn’t look as bad as I would have expected. Some of the people even look kind of cheerful.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Am in Guangzhou now at the Holiday Inn. The west train station, which is the origin of trains heading north, is where all the action is. There are reports from the scene on TVB, the Hong Kong TV station, as well as local news. The interesting thing is the link you posted doesn’t work from behind the Great Firewall!

China Daily (the Party’s English newspaper distributed in the mainland) had a front page story on deicing – by hand, using hammers – power lines north of us. There workers died when a pylon collapsed. Anhui and Hunan are particularly hard-hit, with China Daily reporting food shortages in some cities and traffic jams tens of kilometers long.

We are not going north, but south to Hong Kong (after we leave the US consulate) from the east train station, which still has a large crowd, even though the trains go south and east. I am glad we got out of Chongqing with our newly-adopted baby on Tuesday, as flights were cancelled and delayed.

Good luck.