article: Every Chinese New Year as people board trains, planes, buses, cars and mopeds to head home for the warmth of the family reunion, they arrive battered and beleaguered, each with their own tale of travelling woe. The 20-hour journeys with standing room only. The pickpockets. And just the sheer overwhelming numbers of people, thronging every platform, forming every queue. So when the whole country seemingly becomes one large crowd it might seem unlikely that China would be shocked by pictures of a large crowd. But then the Guangzhou Railway Station crowd was a particularly special one. The snarl-up began on Monday with bad weather further north causing the cancellation or delay to some services out of Guangzhou. As word spread of the increasingly large throng of waiting passengers, even more people began turning up extra early for their trains and the problem only intensified. At the peak, 100,000 people were crammed shoulder to shoulder on the giant square in front of the station, spilling out into side roads. "We are like dumplings in a bowl," one man told me. He faced a three-hour wait to clear security and then, once finally aboard his train, an eight-hour journey home. "I am very tired," another young woman said "but when I think about my mother and father at home I feel warm and I want to be with them sooner." Despite the extraordinary scenes of congestion, this was as much a picture of railway efficiency and resilience, as chaos and delay. Despite more than 1,000 extra police officers being drafted in for the crowds, there was little trouble for them to deal with. I saw one passenger slugging a uniformed police officer with his bag, enraged that he had been stopped from climbing over a metal barrier, but for the most part, there was that old, resigned acceptance that all this is part of the fabric of Chinese New Year. And, by Wednesday, the authorities had begun to get to grips with the problems on the network itself, bringing in extra trains, or diverting passengers to other train stations, and all the while thousands upon thousands of new passengers continue to arrive, shepherded through the concourse in long, snaking lines, through security and onto trains which, for the most part, were kept running to time. This year, for many of the migrant workers who make up a large proportion of the crowds, there is another, far deeper concern than the issue of just another hectic trip home. China's industrial landscape is changing. The factories, once the centrepiece of the economy, are relocating to countries where wages are lower and, in addition, many migrants now see increasing opportunities in the smaller towns and cities closer to their homes. So, many migrants are packing their bags for the last time and deciding that, after travelling home this year, that is where they will stay. China manufacturing shrinks for sixth month in a row Factory bosses report that, at the same time as they face falling demand for their products, they find it increasingly hard to man
summary: For many millions it is an unavoidable ritual, something to be tolerated with as much patience as one can muster because the reward at the end is worth it.