Snow Strands 100,000 New Year's Travelers in a Chinese Train Station

Chinese New Year, which falls on February 8, is all about making a fresh start and bringing in good luck. But en route to Year of the Monkey celebrations, 100,000 unlucky passengers were stranded earlier this week at a train station in Guangzhou thanks to a rare bout of heavy snow and freezing temperatures. This comes at a time when the country is experiencing the world’s largest annual human migration—with more than 2.9 billion trips expected.

According to the Chinese news agency, the poor weather resulted in flight cancellations and road blocks, which pushed people toward the country’s already crowded railways. And even though extra trains were added, some railways were experiencing delays of up to an hour. At the Guangzhou station, at least 32 trains were delayed, reports the South China Morning Post. That left hundreds of thousands of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder for hours—many in the pouring rain—at railway stations across central and eastern China.