The following article originally appeared on Chinaelevatorstories.com. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.

Six years ago, my husband was near Guangzhou railway station. He wasn’t the only one. It was Chunyun (春运 chūnyùn), the yearly mass migration that China experiences before the Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival. Guangzhou and Beijing are the biggest transport hubs in mainland China and every year in the weeks before the New Year, millions of people have to change at the train stations of these two metropolises in order to get home in time to celebrate Spring Festival with their loved ones.

My husband was one of those travellers. If he wanted to go back home, he could either take a train from Guangzhou to Changchun, or one from Shenzhen to Shenyang. Fortunately, his family was able to get a train ticket for him from Guangzhou to Changchun for Chinese New Year.

But he’s wasn’t the only one who needed to change trains in Guangzhou. The weather gods seemed to be playing tricks on the chunyun travellers and sent heavy snow storms to Guangzhou. The city, being in the very southeast of China, is not usually a place where it snows. So on that day neither trains nor planes were able to move — and neither were the people stranded at the train station or at any other place where the travellers were able to find shelter from the blizzard. My husband had to wait in a crowd of tens of thousands of people at a square in front of the train station, and with about 170,000 people already stranded in the station, there was no moving forward or backward. The army was trying to keep things under control and not let too many people move forwards or backwards at once. My husband is lucky that he’s taller than most of the other travellers, but that was about his only advantage.

People started fainting. Those who did were carried out of the railway station or away from the squares by the crowds above their heads – similar to crowd surfing, but without the fun. Unfortunately, some didn’t make it out alive.

For 12 hours, my husband stood in the crowd, moving forward only from time to time. After 12 hours without eating and without being able to go to the restrooms, he finally made it into the railway station. Twelve hours for 1.3 km – not bad. Once he made it inside the railway station, he had to wait another 15 hours for his train. There was no drinking water left and empty instant noodle cups were stacked two floors high. Much of the personnel fled the scene, afraid of the angry crowds – but not without reason.  Finally, my husband made it on a northeastern bound train. On that day, the ticket he bought was not important. The only important thing was know whether you were going north or west. Once a train arrives that goes into your direction, you get on it.

On the train, the lower beds of the sleeper compartments were turned into seats and instead of a one person bed, there were four sitting along the lower bunks. The aisles were filled with people standing or sitting on small chairs they brought with them. But on that day, the crowds on the train didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered at the end of January on a cold day in 2008 was getting out of the hell out of Guangzhou railway station.

Photo credit: USA Today