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We drove into the ordinary rural village and were met by what at first glance looked like a very ordinary man.

Under a searing sun, he stood there on the dry gritty earth calmly waiting, wearing the typical navy blue pants and once-white cotton shirt, in effect the national uniform in those early days after the awakening of the sleeping giant that was China. He seemed in no hurry to see us all climb out of the two beaten-up old vans we had arrived in, as if time was an asset he was accustomed to spending freely and easily.

He was a man I guessed to be toward the end of his middle years, a slim figure with a long narrow face, a high forehead accentuated by a receding hairline and black bushy brows over eyes sharp and observing, yet kindly, behind big square glasses. With his head on a bit of a tilt, he gazed at us with an expression of gentle curiosity. His bearing was of a man clearly comfortable in his own skin.

“Everyone, I’d like to introduce you to Dr Wang,” said our guide. “He is the head archeologist who supervised the excavation of the 7000 terracotta soldiers guarding Emperor Qin’s tomb.”

We, a dozen Westerners, were in a village not far from Xian, a city long used to the spectacle of foreigners. Xian is the site of the first imperial capital of a united Middle Kingdom under the Qin Dynasty when it was the beginning, or the end, of the Silk Road, the most famous of early trade routes, when caravans of camels delivered ceramics and silks to foreign lands and brought in precious stones and gold, as well as novel ideas and philosophies.

The guide then turned to the scientist and spoke briefly to him in Chinese. Dr Wang gave us a small acknowledging nod of the head, and without a word turned and walked toward the village. We were there to follow.

He led us over the dusty path along white-washed concrete structures heavily stained with ochre earth, their open doors revealing unfinished dirt floors and sparse utilitarian furnishings. The stark stench from the open sewage canals intensified the feel of poverty.

It was a relief, then, to reach the end of the village, to escape the oppression of the senses, to walk in the open air, even if the early summer heat was hard to bear.

Dr Wang seemed oblivious to all of this. He walked on ahead through the open fields like a man with a serious mission at a serious pace. We had to concentrate on our footing on the uneven terrain to keep up with him.

Then all of a sudden he stopped walking. I had barely noticed that we had come to the far edge of a field that revealed yet another field, but this one was not farmed; rather, it was a good meter or two deeper, evidently the excavation site.

Our host waited for the group to gather around him. Then he started to speak animatedly while sweeping his right arm widely from west to east to indicate the extent of the plot of rough soil before us. Without understanding his words, I understood his passion for his work which poured out smoothly, like old precious white tea from a lovely porcelain pot.

Our guide translated, telling us about this new discovery of yet another tomb, a much later one than the famous terracotta soldiers’ tomb, dating to the Ming Dynasty. But I wasn’t listening very closely, being more engaged in just trying to see what lay before me through the archeologist’s lively eyes than to hear the historical details. Where my untrained eye saw only dirt and rubble, I could only imagine his visions of grandeur of a time long past, one he was fully committed to unearth and bring to light for the rest of us to see.

When the guide completed his narration, we all turned to head back, most of us more than a little eager to find some modern day comfort in the coolness of the vans we had come in.

I surmised that this journey was now nearly over, without having the faintest notion that another exquisite surprise was in store for us.

Back in the village, Dr Wang suddenly turned to enter one of the houses. At first, not knowing what to do, we hesitated and looked at each other until he motioned for us to follow him in.

The room, though appointed only with one single wood bed and a simple wood desk with chair, was not large enough to fit us all in, so some were left to peek in from outside the door. Many were shocked to learn that for the duration of this field project, this room served as this esteemed scientist’s accommodation and office. Some time later our guide confided to me that Dr Wang earned less than a taxi driver, yet I had grasped that personal material benefit was not what motivated this dedicated professional.

Dr Wang bent down to kneel on the ground and slowly, very slowly, pulled a suitcase out from under his bed, a red hard-cover suitcase. Gently, with great care and astonishing strength, as if it were filled only with feathers, he lifted the suitcase onto his bed.

He nimbly removed the lock and opened the case to reveal the pink satin lining and a collection of paper-wrapped shapes. His strong sinewy fingers picked up the first of the shapes and, with the tenderness of an experienced lover, he unwrapped it. Layer after layer of brown paper came off until finally we could fully view the contents: a perfectly preserved, perfectly formed 18” ceramic figurine.

Then one by one Dr Wang lightly unwrapped, presented, and rewrapped the rest of the figurines. Each had its own unique face, its own unique body shape. Each he handled and cradled lovingly like a newborn baby. We were not allowed to touch, but the visual pleasure was enough.

While Qin’s terracotta soldiers were impressive for their stature and sheer quantity, seeing these figurines in Dr Wang’s devoted care brought an intimacy to the experience that was rare and precious.

Dr Wang’s love for his métier touched me deeply.

As our group climbed back into the van, I realized I was leaving this ordinary village with a special memory of meeting an extraordinary man.

On the day the first part of this account was written, I had no idea whether Wong and his wife were alive. Or whether they were condemned to be, or had already been, executed by the communist government of China.

Time was running short – it was less than a month before the 11^th Asian Games in 1990 were scheduled to open in Beijing. The customary practice of the government was – and still is – to put on trial and convict a number of lawbreakers and then swiftly execute them some days before a significant event takes place in order to set an example and to warn anyone with any notions of creating trouble during the event.

And so our friends in Kaiping figured that Wong and his wife would be executed, if not before the Asian Games, then before the October 1 National Day at the latest.

I had already done what I could. I had turned to the only person I knew who was reputed to have the power it would take to change the course of events, and that was Deng (for his story, read earlier post). Two days earlier I had asked him to pull some political strings to save the lives of Wong and his wife.

I first met Wong in 1986 when Allan and I returned to Kaiping together from Canada for business reasons. In the small town of Sanfu, Allan’s hometown and capital of the county, there was a small group of young men who hung out together. Each of these young men had at least one parent who was a high government official. Allan’s father, for instance, was the Director of the Kaiping Judicial Bureau.

Even though Wong’s high-ranking father had died and the family no longer held any political influence, Wong was one of Allan’s closest friends. Wong was tall and slim, a street smart young man in his early twenties then, known as a “little big boss”. Francisca did not like the way he bullied farmers and common people. A Chinese idiom about a fox would suitably describe his manner: “a fox bor­rowing the tiger’s terror,” which roughly means to bully people by flaunting one’s powerful connections.

Nevertheless, in essence he was not a bad guy, only a bit young and ignorant. And over the next few years, whenever Francisca and I visited Sanfu, he was always pleasant and helpful to us. Perhaps it was because we were foreigners, particularly Francisca being a white woman, rarely seen in these more remote areas, a novelty. To him, just to be able to associate with us was an honor. He was patently eager to run any errand for us; arranging a car to go places, making sure our boat tickets to Hong Kong were reserved, changing money in the black market for us, and so on. On one occasion he plainly and rather proudly declared himself our “errand boy”.

Wong and his friends, backed by their parents’ power or influence, speculated on buying and selling automobiles. In these early days of China’s “open door” policy, private cars were extreme­ly scarce, and these young guys were able to make use of their parents’ political status to make a big profit on trading cars. Life was very easy for them for quite a while.

That next year, Wong earned about ¥100,000. In a county like Kaiping, where the average factory worker made less than ¥200 a month, this was a huge amount. He was able to live a very good life, in his own apartment, driving a very sporty Suzuki motorcycle and dining at the best restau­rants.

Not too long after, the government began to tighten up the controls on buying and selling cars, and these guys were put out of business. Wong had to scramble to find a new business.

Kaiping is well known overseas, with more of its people living abroad, mostly in the USA and Canada, than in the county itself. One time I told Wong that if ever he or any of his friends wanted to leave China, I knew a way to get a visa to go to the Bahamas from where it would be easier to arrange an entry into the States. But first he had to have a Chinese passport and at the time a Chinese passport was extremely difficult to get. He told me that in fact he had already been thinking about leaving China because his business was not doing well, and as soon as he obtained his passport, he would come to me for help.

However, after this visit to Kaiping in ‘89, we never saw Wong again.

Ten months later on a very hot autumn day, Lok, Frank and I were sitting in our hotel room in my hometown, Samheung. We were chatting about everything from history to economics to the latest world news, and, of course, fengshui.

Suddenly Lok turned to me and said: “Luksan, have you heard the latest about Wong and his wife?”

“No,” I replied, “where is he now and how is he doing?”

“Well, right now, he and his wife are in the detention house in Kaiping waiting to be tried and sentenced. The police captured them and brought them back from Macao. The way it looks, both of them are going to be executed.”

This news came to me as a shock. I asked Lok to tell me how Wong and his wife ended up where they were. This is how the story went.

Not long after I talked to Wong about helping him leave China, he had applied and gotten a passport for himself through his government connections. Before approaching me for help, though, he talked with his wife. He told her that he had decided to go to the Bahamas and from there to the USA. He had a number of relatives in San Francisco who could help him before he was able to stand on his own. He asked his wife to look after their one-year old baby and his mother, and he promised her that as soon as he could earn a living in San Francisco, he would send for her and the child.

When the wife heard his proposal, she went wild. Perhaps the fear of losing him or of living alone, or perhaps jealousy from imagining him find another woman, or a combination of all these feelings, drove her into a rage. She vehemently opposed her husband’s plan to leave China without her. She cried that if he must leave, they would leave together. Wong said there was only enough money for one person to go. She told him to let her worry about the money.

One evening a couple months later, Wong showed up at Lok’s house in the village. Wong told Lok that he was going to a far away place and had come to say goodbye. Since Wong did not know if he would return or when he would return, he asked Lok to remember him and to visit his mother and child once in a while.

Wong’s words were like those of a prisoner before going to the death chamber, full of sorrow. Lok saw that Wong’s aura was covered with clouds and misery filled his face. Lok was moved and agreed to stay in touch with the family.

Lok sensed something big was coming down and that it was not a good thing. What he really wanted to do was to stop Wong from going, but he also knew that whatever was about to happen must happen. He subsequently did a reading on Wong’s bazi (birth chart) and found that a major disaster was waiting for him in the near future: the descriptive line for the disaster was “death due to money”.

Two days later, the news traveled through Sanfu that Wong and his wife had disappeared and that the state-owned factory Wong’s wife worked in was missing ¥350,000 (about US$75K at the time) – alleged to be stolen by Wong’s wife, the accountant in that factory. The Chinese law stipulated the death penalty for anyone who “plundered” the government for more than ¥50,000. The local police were actively searching for them while their names were placed on the Most Wanted list in Guangdong.

Local interest in Wong’s case faded as time went by and there was no further news. Even Wong’s closest friends and his mother did not know his whereabouts. Life went on and everything went back to normal until several months later when the police brought Wong and his wife back from Macau. There were a number of stories flying around about how they got caught and how they were extradited, and there was no way I could verify any of these stories.

So here I continue to narrate what I was told by Lok and Frank. According to them, Wong and his wife got caught because they brought about their own destruction. After finally fleeing China to live in a free place, they had to cast themselves back into the net. It was just their fate.

For their few months in Macau, Wong lived the life of a playboy. Everyday he had nothing to do but patronize casinos and brothels. Money was not a problem because they had brought a lot from China. However, his wife was miserable because she had caught Wong with a prostitute a couple of times. She did not mind him gambling, but knowing he frequented prostitutes upset her greatly.

One day she laid down the ultimatum that if she ever caught Wong with a prostitute again, she would go to the police to report him. She told him she would rather die together with Wong than seeing him with another woman. Sure enough, some time later, she caught him red-handed again. She went to the Macau police to report him, thinking the laws of Macau were similar to those of China where a man could be arrested for exploiting prostitution.

However, when the Macau police discovered that these two were on the Most Wanted list in China, they informed the Guangdong police and let them handle the case. That same evening, armed Chinese police came into Macau to arrest Wong and his wife and took them back to Kaiping. More than three quarters of the stolen money was recovered.

Words alone could not express Wong’s wife’s regret. She knew she had committed a serious crime and she was prepared to die for it. But she lamented that her jealousy and stupidity would also cause Wong to lose his life. In the detention house in Kaiping she tried to pass a note to Wong through a guard, but the note fell into the hands of the police. In that note, she asked Wong to deny everything and let her take the blame alone so that only one, instead of two, would die.

Listening to this story made a chill run down my spine; it actually made me shiver on that hot autumn day. When Lok finished the story, the room was quiet – for some time, no one knew what to say.

Lok felt particularly bad, not only because Wong was his friend, but also because he had given his promise before Wong left. He asked me if I had any ideas that would help.

I asked Lok if Wong’s bazi showed that he would die young. The answer was affirmative.

Frank then said that they even went to Wong’s village to look at the geography. They found that there was a river running around the village that looked like a rope around a person’s neck; in other words, very bad fengshui for the whole village. They went into the village to chat with the villagers and to their astonishment they learned that many people from this village died young. Perhaps Wong was no exception.

I said to the two, “if it was meant to be this way – that Wong would die young – then there was really nothing much anyone can do to reverse the inevitable.”

Lok answered that one cannot look at it like that because there are many ups and downs in a person’s life and the extreme low points at which life could end are called check points. Some people have more check points than others. If a person can pass one check point, he can live on until his next check point. He gave the examples of people surviving a serious car accident or recovering from a major disease or surgery. But no one, of course, can pass the final check point of old age and natural death.

He went on to say that at that moment, Wong was facing a check point in his life. If he could not get through it, his life would end. But if someone could give a little push along the way, he would make it through. This helping hand is called his gui ren (noble person).

Lok explained that there is no kindness more meaningful than saving a life, and among all lives, saving a human life is the utmost act of compassion. He insisted to me to think hard to find a way to help.

I told Lok and Frank that the only person I could think of was Deng. Being the nephew of the top man in China, he was very well connected. Only he could talk to the authorities to save Wong’s life. But it was a long shot and there was no guarantee.

Lok said to me, “Just do your best, and let heaven decide.” In other words: Man proposes; God disposes.

The next morning I rushed out to Hong Kong to find Deng. He was in Shenzhen and I asked him to come out to Hong Kong to meet me because I had something very urgent that needed his help. It was really a matter of life and death.

Deng came in the afternoon and we met at the Excelsior Hotel for a drink. After I told him Wong’s story in detail, I asked if he could help. He mused for a few minutes, and then he said to me, “Okay, I’ll help you. But I cannot promise anything, because they did commit a serious crime which warrants the death penalty. I’ll call the head of the Guangdong Security Bureau to request them to commute their death sentences to life imprisonment. But I am not sure if he will give me face!”

“Deng, as long as you make that call, you have done your best. And I’ll be forever grateful to your help for saving a friend’s life. As for the outcome, let heaven decide!” I said.

After this meeting, I went back to the Philippines and stayed there for a few months. This first part of Wong’s story was written in our home in Manila.

The second part, or the outcome of Wong’s case, is continued below.

Some months later, after the Chinese New Year, I returned to China. It was near the end of winter and the air was still cool. I took a boat into Kaiping from Hong Kong. During the few hours on the boat, I reviewed in mind Wong’s case, Lok’s outlook on life, and Deng’s promise.

I must admit that every so often in the previous few months I had thought of Wong and I was eager to know if he was still alive. It meant a lot to me if our efforts had turned out positive.

Immediately after checking into my hotel, I went to find Frank and Lok. My first question to them was: “Is Wong still alive?” The answer was yes. I felt a wave of relief.

Then they told me that sometime before the National Day last year, a couple of policemen from the Provincial Security Bureau came to Kaiping to investigate Wong’s case. Apparently they told the local police or the court to commute the death sentence for both Wong and his wife, pending further investigation.

Shortly before October 1, 11 criminals from the local area were executed. Lok said it should have been 13, but somehow, Wong and his wife were spared. In other words, they had made it through the check point.

A voice inside my head was screaming: “Deng, you son of a bitch! You really did it. Thank you, thank you!!”

Both Wong and his wife were given life sentences and the opportunity to repay the government the money they spent in Macau in exchange for the death sentence. They were sent to different labor camps in north Guangdong.

Lok was rather optimistic about the whole thing. He felt that within a few years, Wong could maybe get out for being sick if someone would pay some money and make the arrangements. (It did not turn out that way.)

I reported on my meeting with Deng and Deng’s promise to make a phone call. We were all amazed at the power of that one phone call. It could only happen in China.

Many months later, during one of our drinking sessions with Deng, I asked him if he still remembered the Wong case. He said: “Yes, what happened to him?”

I told him both Wong and his wife were alive. They were now serving life sentences in labor camps.

Deng said: “Good! He did give me face! I had been wondering.”

It depressed me to think that it was more important to Deng that he was given face than that he had saved two lives, but then again, the lives were saved, and that was what mattered to me.

[A PS about Wong: he is back in Kaiping, a free man. He worked in the labor camp for about 15 years and was released. We have no other details.]

We first heard the name of Deng Chung Leung aka Deng Yu back in December ’89 in Hong Kong from an eccentric Canadian, Ross Sinclair.

Ross and we became good friends over the years that followed our first meeting in the coffee shop of the Prince Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. We had been referred to each other by a mutual business friend. It was a Friday after­noon, and we had a leisurely long chat over a few drinks.

The most remarkable story Ross told us that day was about his association with Deng, purportedly the nephew of Deng Xiao Ping, yes, THE Deng Xiao Ping! Ross and Deng had developed a close friendship, he told us, in spite of the fact that they had problems communicating with each other. Over the 21 years Ross had been in Asia, mostly in Hong Kong, he had learned to speak some Canton­ese and had picked up a little bit of Mandarin, while Deng, a Sichuan native, spoke Mandarin with a heavy Sichuan accent.

As Ross told it, Deng was a powerful figure in Guangzhou and southern parts of Guangdong province. Being the relative of the top figure in China, he did not really do, or need to do, much in the way of work or business. He just loved to have fun and to drink with his buddies. And drink is what Ross knew how to do well.

One Sunday afternoon the next June, Ross called to say that Deng was in town, and if we would like to meet him we should come down to the White Stag Pub on Canton Road. We got to the pub at about 6:00 pm and Ross and Deng were there already having their beers.

Ross did the introductions and asked us what we wanted to drink. I ordered a cold coffee, and Deng reacted very surprised that I didn’t join them with a beer. He asked me why, and I told him I had quit drinking alcohol for over 10 years. He said, “That’s no good; we are men, and men should be able to drink.” So he insisted. And I relented, even though I despise the taste of beer.

Deng was a tall skinny guy, wearing a worn old shirt, with an equally worn pair of old pants. In other words, he looked like a typical northern Chinese in those days, not well dressed at all.

One thing a bit unusual about him was that he was very sociable – not at all like other snooty high positioned Chinese government officials I had met before. Maybe his relaxed demeanor was because we were Canadians, also Ross’s friends. Deng seemed to enjoy making friends with foreigners, and in fact, he confided in me unabashedly that he was on the lookout for a white girlfriend, and was there any way we could help?

Much later, Ross recounted to us the story of the fight at the Baiyun Hotel in Guangzhou.

At one time, Ross had had a couple of Canadian friends over from his home town, Thun­der Bay, Ontario. They went up to Guangzhou to see Deng. Just for kicks, Deng brought them to an army base to shoot machine guns. They spent five days in Guangzhou touring, visiting and having fun. And Deng was with them the entire time.

One night, they were having dinner and drinking at the Baiyun Hotel. Deng called in four beautiful Xinjiang women to entertain his Canadian friends at the dinner table.

Apparently these Xinjiang women were from high class and powerful families in Xinjiang. They had run away to the south to have a good time. Their families back home sent four “warriors” down south to find them and bring them home. It so happened that these warriors found them at the Baiyun Hotel that night while they were with Deng and Ross. The warriors simply came forward and dragged the women outside the hotel and into their car.

Besides Ross and his two friends, Deng had eight friends at the table. These other men were mostly from the army, and they all got into a fight with the warriors. Meanwhile Ross was trying to stop his own friends from joining the scrimmage, wanting to avoid an international incident. Those Xinjiang warriors were very good fighters and Deng’s gang could not match them. Some minutes later, several policemen came and they too joined the fight.

The fight did not end until uniformed PSB (Public Security Bureau) men got there. The Xinjiang men were arrested. The head of the PSB group recognized Deng and asked Deng what to do with the warriors. Deng didn’t say a word, simply pointed his thumb down, as if he was a Roman Emperor deciding the fate of a Coliseum gladiator.

The next day Ross found out from Deng’s associates that the four warriors had disappeared; most likely executed, was Ross’s guess.

Another rather strange story with Deng involved the Doo’s brothers.

The Doo’s brothers were good friends of Deng at one time. Of the three brothers, the senior Doo was a good guy and the second Doo was the bad guy, according to Deng and Ross.

Somehow the second Doo had managed to steal over 100 million yuan (about US$25 million) from the Beijing government. This middle Doo was blacklisted by the State Council in Beijing.

Earlier, the three brothers, using Deng’s connection with the head security in Guangzhou, had spent a million yuan each to buy themselves Hong Kong IDs and had come to Hong Kong to set up a trading company. Deng had helped them in their business by getting them import permits for TV tubes, circuit boards, auto parts and the like, items that were very difficult to import into China at the time.

With all the import permits, they shipped container loads of goods worth 70 million yuan (USD 17.5 million) into China. But some of the goods were seized by Shanghai Customs, and the Doo brothers were charged with smuggling. According to Deng, China was a poor place, and each port had its own authorities running their own shows. The Shanghai Customs Office simply confiscated Doo’s goods.

The eldest Doo went up to Shanghai to negotiate, but instead, he was locked up for six months there. Again Deng used his connections to have the senior Doo released. A few months later, the third Doo went to Guangzhou for business and was arrested. He was still in jail in Guangzhou at the time Deng was telling us this story.

So the middle Doo, the bad guy, was really worried then. The money he stole from China was almost gone. He was in hiding - the PSB could come to HK to take him back to China anytime. According to Deng, stealing more than 50,000 yuan (US$12,500) from the government was enough of a crime to be shot. And second Doo knew that the minute he crossed the border into China, he’d be a dead man. What a way to live one’s life!

We saw Deng a few more times, but then we lost contact.

You’d think I’d have something more substantive to talk about than weather… again. But when it poops on the biggest party going, it’s impossible to stay mute.

In our office, the party is simply referred to as CNY – Chinese New Year.

For the few that don’t know, CNY is based on the lunar calendar and generally occurs between three to six weeks after the Western New Year, January 1. The first day of the coming Year of the Rat falls on February 7.

CNY – aka Spring Festival – is celebrated not only by most of the 1.3+ billion people in China, but also by those of ethnic Chinese descent living throughout Southeast Asia, as well as more informally by the many of Chinese origin scattered far beyond the Middle Kingdom. This Chinese diaspora is estimated to be over 40 million people.

In sheer numbers, that makes for a very BIG party indeed.

This festival, in terms of its importance to its celebrants, can most closely be compared to the Western world’s celebration of Christmas. Simply, it is a time for family gatherings. And to most Chinese, family still rules.

Ever since China opened its doors to the world, late ‘70s, early ‘80s, and started its economic ascent, more and more workers and entrepreneurs migrated from the interior to the coastal cities to earn a living. Take for typical example the town of Songgang we live in; twenty years ago it was a small town surrounded by rice fields of less than 30,000 Cantonese and today there are 300,000 factory workers, restaurant owners/workers, shop keepers, masseuses, dentists, whatever is needed in a too-fast growing urban area, all of whom came in from more northern provinces. When starting to speak to someone, Lordson needs to ask first whether they understand Cantonese, and most frequently they can not.

I read somewhere that this CNY the number that would attempt to travel home for the holiday will reach 176 million students and migrant workers – that is over half the population of the USA!

But these are not merely “statistics on the move” (as once described by travel writer Jan Morris).

After a year of working hard, six, if not seven, days a week, living in cramped dormitories and eating mediocre canteen food, often far from their home towns, often separated from their children or spouses, often without any other substantial break in the year, people understandably have their hearts set on returning to their family homes to reconnect, to share stories and familiar home-cooked meals.

So what’s this about the weather, you say?

The words Spring Festival summon in my mind soft rains bringing budding plum blossoms. Yet the two-week period of the CNY more often than not is the coldest time of the year in southern China. With no central heating south of the Yangtze River, this is the period I typically sit at my desk in Greater Shenzhen wearing five layers of warm clothing and wool gloves with finger tips cut off for ease of typing.

Even with the most cooperative weather, this annual migration strains the infrastructure to the max and then some. Even with the government’s emergency planning, there just aren’t enough roads, buses, trains, planes, even boats, to handle this massive number of humans on the move.

This year, the already critical situation has been hugely exacerbated by a vicious cold spell that has brought snow and ice to southern regions that have not experienced such chilly temperatures since 1954.

The unexpected winter weather plugged up countless roads – last week it took John 17 hours to get from our office to his Hunan home town, a drive that usually takes no more than five hours – and caused delays in coal deliveries needed for heating (north of the Yangtze). Snowed under train tracks and ice damaged power lines disrupted railways and the Guangzhou train station had to cope with nearly ½ million stranded travelers, police dispatched to help supply them with food and water bottles. A few of the 50 thousand flyers awaiting take-off at the Guangzhou Baiyun Airport unable to get on planes to airports with frozen runways started a riot, chanting, “We want to go home!”

So when the government sent out messages via radio, TV, even SMS by cell phones, imploring would-be travelers to stay put, to abandon their homebound journeys, I asked my marketing team what they intended to do. A few had arranged for their families to come down south to Shenzhen, moving counter-traffic.

But Sunny insisted on ignoring the pleas, and said, “I just want to go home [to Hunan] to have some happiness time with our family, my father, my mother, my brother and my sister. Also, we will have a party for my grandmother for her 90 years old birthday.”

Sounds reasonable. Yet weather forecasts are gloomy; the cold spell is said to stay until well after the CNY. All I can do is hope against hope that the weather eases in time for her and that she, and millions like her, makes it home to the party. Otherwise this CNY will go down as the winter of their discontent.