China steeled for worse weather as holidays loom

SHAOGUAN, China (Reuters) - Work crews battled on Saturday to restore power to parts of southern China blacked out for over a week by the fiercest snow storms in 50 years as the government warned that worse was to come.

Mobilizing the might of the state, China has deployed more than 300,000 troops and nearly 1.1 million militia and army reservists to help keep traffic moving and ensure power supplies, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Repair teams were working flat out to restore power to the southern province of Henan, one of the worst-hit areas. Chenzhou, a city of 4 million, has been without electricity for eight days and petrol and food supplies are running low.

"We will strive to partially restore electricity supply in Chenzhou on Saturday," Xinhua quoted Yin Jijun, an official with China's national grid, as saying.

Fresh falls of snow started to blanket central, south and east China on Friday, prompting the government to warn that the weather crisis had yet to peak.

"The most difficult period is still not over yet. The situation remains grim," the cabinet said in a summary of an emergency meeting to coordinate relief efforts.

As much as 15 cm (6 inches) of snow covered Shanghai, the financial capital, on Saturday while the neighboring provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang issued alerts for blizzards and icy roads. Beijing was once again cold but clear.

The government said the disaster, which has killed 60 and doomed millions to a cold dark Lunar New Year holiday next week, was still unfolding.

Premier Wen Jiabao visited Hunan province on Friday for the second time in a week. State television showed him telling officials to redouble their efforts to restore basic services.

Wen told his cabinet that officials at all levels had to do more solid work "to ensure economic and social stability" in the face of the disaster, Xinhua reported.

Prices of vegetables in particular are rising sharply because of the freak weather. With inflation already near an 11-year high, officials are worried about the potential for unrest.

Some 8,000 freight trains have been delayed in the past week as toppled power lines and icy rails crippled the rail network, triggering the country's most serious power crisis ever.

The government has put the immediate economic losses of the weather chaos at $7.5 billion. It says that 223,000 houses have been toppled by snow or ice and 862,000 damaged.

SNAIL'S PACE

As the railways creak back to life, coal shipments are being given priority, reducing crowded passenger trains to a crawl.

Train L44, bound from the southern metropolis of Guangzhou to Beijing, took 11 hours to reach Shaoguan, a distance of just over 200 km (125 miles) that should have taken at most two hours.

Still, the 2,000 passengers on board were not complaining. Exhausted but relieved, they are among the lucky ones.

Millions of migrant workers, for whom the Lunar New Year is usually the only time in the year they see their families, will instead spend the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar stuck in the factory towns where they toil.

Nearly 6 million passengers have been stranded on trains or in railway stations this week, officials estimate.

Cao Panpan, a 24-year-old trading company employee, recounted how he had been swept along at Guangzhou station in a sea of people anxious to get on their train.

"For the rest of my life I will never forget February 1, 2008, at Guangzhou train station," he said.

As many as 800,000 people besieged the station earlier this week.

One electronics company worker was among those who had given up hope and had gone back to refund his ticket. Instead he was caught up in a human surge and finished up on board L44.

As the train crept past low brown hills and harvested rice fields, his face lit up as he imagined walking through the door of his family home in Henan province.

"At my home we kill a pig for Chinese New Year and serve up all sorts of special food. The family gets together and we talk about the past year and make plans for the coming year. You can't beat it," he said.

(Writing by Alan Wheatley)