Happy Lunar New Year – but only for some in China
BEIJING – The world’s most populous nation began its week-long Lunar New Year holiday yesterday, but hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of people will probably spend the biggest festival of the year in the cold and dark.
Citizens in Chenzhou, a city of about four million in central Hunan, have added flashlights and candles to their shopping lists, in addition to meat, cooking oil, vegetables, clothes, wine and cigarettes.
Power, like the water, had been off for 12 consecutive days.
“We cannot watch TV, so my family will listen to the CCTV evening gala for Spring Festival on the radio tonight,” a local resident told China View.
“If the lights go back on, I think I will have a shower first,” he said.
Lunar New Year, known as Spring Festival, is the most important family holiday for China’s 1.3 billion people.
Every year, China Central Television (CCTV) holds a special on Lunar New Year’s Eve, featuring dances, songs, and short comedies.
This year, the gala was characterised by another theme: unity and the courage of the Chinese people to cope with the snow disaster.
The government sent millions of candles, as well as diesel generators and food, to the affected regions ahead of the Lunar New Year, especially to people living in remote mountainous areas.
Freak winter weather – prolonged snow, rain and sleet – has persisted since mid-January in China’s eastern, central and southern regions.
It has downed power lines, coated roads with thick ice, brought trains, buses and planes to standstill and stranded millions of people.
The weather, the worst in five decades, has led to deaths, structural collapses, blackouts, accidents, transport problems and livestock and crop losses in 19 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
More than 100 million people have been affected, and at least 60 people have died in the freezing weather.
Report from China View
Ian Jarrett
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