Back in Hunan

I just got back to Hunan yesterday after being gone for a month, and having traveled around with my family for almost two weeks before that. So much has happened since I was last here. China suffered it's worst winter in fifty years and people all over the country suffered. The timing was perfectly horrible, as the Lunar New Year holiday hosts the largest annual movement of people on the planet, when almost EVERYONE in China has at least two weeks off to go home and celebrate the new year with family. The weather caused both passenger and freight trains to stop running, leading to logistical nightmares around the country, including between 400,000 and 800,000 (at various times) people stuck at Guangzhou train station for the better part of a week. In addition to this, many places suffered from loss of electricity and backed up shipments of coal, which means no heat for the house or warm food for the family, as coal is still China's main source of energy.

It was particularly bad in Hunan. Temperatures here dropped to -5 degrees Celcius during the day, colder at night. In a town where it has not snowed in three years and it normally gets no colder than 5 degrees, storms brought rain followed by extreme cold that caused telephone poles to freeze and crack, power lines to snap, and transportation routes to close down. There were almost two feet of snow and ice on the ground, and many trees broke in half under the weight of so much ice. There was almost no power for the better part of twenty days -- as in a few random hours a day -- and my students took their final exams shivering in their classrooms, cursing the weather which caused them to be unable to study after the sun went down. Candles were among the first things to sell out at the grocery store, followed by the Chinese version of Cup-o-noodles. There were scares of food shortages across the country and province, but I am told most people here ate alright. The train lines were blocked off and it was dangerously icy on the roads, preventing many from going home for the New Year.

But everything seems strangely back to normal now, and if I hadn't been aware that this had happened, I probably would not have noticed the small differences (thank you to Andrew for telling me to document this):

-- Many of the trees are stripped of their branches. There is a big, knocked over tree blocking the walkway to our apartment.
-- The hands of the lady who puts the groceries in the bags at the store were about twice as large as usual, red, puffy, and cracked.
-- There are more people out on the streets, talking to each other. I was wondering why, and I think it's because not everyone has their power back yet, and so their TVs don't work so they have to socialize outside. -- Many people do not have cell phone reception back yet. One of the two towers (each for a different company) is broken.
-- Outside my calligraphy teacher's house, under a ramp, there was big mound of ice three feet tall, that hadn't melted yet.
-- The market still has no fang bian mian (cup-o-noodles).

Crazy, huh? I can't believe I missed it. Part of me feels lucky to have gotten out in time to make it to Southeast Asia. But part of me feels like I missed something very important, a bonding experience that would connect me to the people of Hunan forever.