Workers find New Year warmth away from home
Updated: 2008-02-07 17:09
GUANGZHOU - Wang Dan, a Chinese migrant worker, has discovered that it wasn't so bad after all to spend Lunar New Year away from his family.
"The government organized a huge dumpling banquet on the eve of the Chinese New Year, and I had a good time watching the CCTV New Year Eve show along with many other migrant workers who were not able to get home," he said.
 Stranded workers from Sichuan Province have their New Year's Eve Dinner together at a factory cafeteria in Fuzhou, East China's Fujian Province, February 6, 2008. Tens of thousands of migrant workers in Fujian who were unable to go home for Spring Festival due to the severe winterstorm were relocated properly by the local government. [Xinhua]
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Wang is a tour guide in Guangzhou, capital of the southern province of Guangdong, which witnessed transportation chaos amid the severe winter weather of the past three weeks, the worst in five decades which led to deaths, structural collapses, blackouts, accidents, transport problems and livestock and crop losses in southern China.
More than 100 million people were affected, and at least 60 people died because of the bad weather.
"The cultural atmosphere here is quite different from my hometown, but I felt that the government was going all out to give us a warm, homelike festival," said Wang, a native of the southwestern Sichuan Province.
Wang was one of about 3.04 million migrant workers who heeded official calls to stay put during the week-long Spring Festival holiday, which began on Wednesday. Officials urged the migrants to stay at their work locations after rail and road systems were disrupted by unusually severe winter storms.
Guangdong, with one of the biggest concentrations of the country's migrant farm workers, is the southern terminus of a trunk railway line that runs northward to Beijing. The number of stranded passengers at the Guangzhou Railway Station peaked at about 600,000 at the height of the transport crisis.
A total of 12.6 million had decided to stay, while 4.6 million were able to go home after transportation services resumed, according to the Guangdong Provincial Department of Labor and Social Security.
There are more than 200 million workers in China who have moved around the country for their jobs. The Spring Festival is the rare holidays for them to go home for family reunion in a year.
In Dadongjie compound where Wang lives, free movies, karaoke facilities and Internet services were offered in a cultural center every day to help the workers, who took several days off, pass the time.
Chen Lilin was chatting on the web with his brother, while many others were singing and dancing in the station.
"I don't feel lonely at all. The Internet helps me to keep in touch with my family," said Chen, a waiter in a local restaurant.
The workers were also offered a range of free activities: dancing and cooking lessons, visits to 18 museums and 157 parks, 350 performances and 250 entertainment activities. According to a government circular, more than 400 museums, exhibition halls and parks had agreed to offer free or discounted admission for migrant workers during the holiday.
"I'll try my best to help every migrant worker have a happy stay here," said the cultural center's head, Liu Gexi, who gave up a previously booked trip home to do just that.
In Shenzhen, a booming city in Guangdong, the government distributed 20,000 phone cards and transportation cards to some of the stranded group. More than 900 cultural activities including films, exhibits, lion dances, karaoke and sports contests were open to more than 2 million migrant workers who chose not to return home.
The local government in Shenzhen's Bao'an District organized a group wedding ceremony for 12 couples from other parts of the country on Tuesday afternoon. More than 140 relatives and friends of the couples enjoyed a free wedding banquet.
Activities were also organized in other disaster areas across China to ensure that migrant workers who followed government calls to stay put would have a happy Spring Festival away from their families.
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