Mother forced to give birth in rail queue as Chinese snow crisis deepens

[Honey]

A Chinese rail passenger today gave birth while queuing for a train that had been delayed a week due to the country's worst snow crisis in 50 years.


Liu Hongqun was forced to have her baby girl in a toilet after three days waiting at Beijing West station after the freak weather snapped power lines.
Liu and her husband were just two of 105 million passengers across China who have been left stranded as heavy snowfall and ice storms disrupted Chinese new year travel plans. Scroll down for more...
Packed: 800,000 passengers stranded in Guangzhou today as weather crisis deepens



The mother, from Sichuan, and her child are now recovering in hospital.
The worst affected station had been Guangzhou, in the far south, where 800,000 people have been waiting since heavy snow began began wreaking havoc a week ago.
Trains finally began moving today as the key line between Beijing and Guangzhou was restored, in part by using diesel locomotives to get through areas hit by power shortages.
The railways would be able to take some 400,000 people a day out of Guangzhou, with travellers allowed to board depending on the date of their ticket, the Southern Metropolis paper reported. Scroll down for more...
Queue baby: The girl was born on the third day her mother waited for a train in Beijing


But with large crowds surrounding most trains that pulled out of the station, travellers needed luck as well as a ticket.
"It's not looking good. This is like if you prepare dinner for two and 200 people show up," said Hu Lin, an environmental assessment official from Hubei province.
The damage caused by the unusual snowfall will cost China's economy billions of pounds.
The freakish conditions snapped power lines for hundreds of electric passenger trains and ice storms have also closed highways. Scroll down for more...
That's my girl: The father coos at his newborn child today as they escape the weather chaos


A staggering 150,000 homes have collapsed and another 650,000 have been seriously damaged, disaster relief officials have revealed.
And a total of 64 people have so far died and the effects of the weather crisis has triggered food shortages.
"The impact of the snow disaster in southern China on winter crop production is extremely serious," said Chen Xiwen, the government's leading expert on the agricultural economy.
"The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic." Scroll down for more...
Shelter: Those hoping to get home for Chinese new year have camped on stranded trains


With rising Chinese demand also contributing to inflation in food prices across the world, economists will also be calculating the international consequences.
The government predicted that the inflation rate for January would remain at a high 6.5 per cent, the same as for December, but other analysts predicted it would rise even further.
But Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who yesterday visited travellers stranded in shelters in Guangzhou, insisted the country would pull through.
"As long as we're vigorously organised, we will be fully able to vanquish the current hardship," he said.
State propaganda outlets have tried to make the best of a bad job, lavishing space on the funerals of three "hero" electricians who died trying to reconnect broken power lines.
And the People's Daily newspaper has attempted summoned up the Chinese equivalent of the Dunkirk spirit in a bid to rally morale.
"When one place suffers misfortune, aid comes from all directions," it said in an editorial. "That is the traditional virtue of the Chinese nation and, even more, it is a vivid portrait of the superiority of the socialist system."

Mother forced to give birth in rail queue as Chinese snow crisis deepens | the Daily Mail

[latinaforever]

she is so cute and wrinkly

[greysfang]

I wonder if they'll name her Lu.