Cold days no hitch to holiday makers
By Liu Weifeng& Cao Li (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-12-31 00:15

Blustery, bone-chilling cold weather over the past two weeks hasn't seemed to put off Beijingers from their daily rounds.

"No obvious effects, everything going as planned," said 26-year-old Wang Ying, a local civil servant.

"I'm going to attend a party tonight to celebrate the coming of the New Year and will climb mountains in a suburban area tomorrow," Wang said, outlining his holiday plans, which were organized by a local car membership club.

Wang was also invited by his former classmates and friends to join parties last night, to go out to dinner and sing later at karaoke.

Not as extroverted as Wang, Sun Yue, a 40ish local publisher, said he never takes the climate change into consideration in his daily life and work.

"I seldom go out for parties and always stay at home when off work," Sun said.

However, both Wang and Sun are living in the coldest winter period in the capital city since 1991, meteorologic records show.

The average daytime temperature was 3C below zero for the past week, 3C lower than has been the case since in previous years since 1991.

"To be frank, we car-owners are not afraid of the chilly winter weather at all, except the frozen roads," said Wang.

Flat Mellie, a tutor in Beijing from Britain, joked that the cold climate to her means that she must perfect her morning shower dash down to a cool three minutes.

Naturally, lots of people feel puzzled about this year's cold weather because so many people became familiar with the "warm winter" of recent years.

Guo Hu, director of the Beijing Municipal Observatory, said the temperatures for the first 22 days of December were higher than the same period over the years before, a sign of a "warm winter."

For the beginning and the middle 11 days in December, the average temperature was 3.9C and 2C higher, respectively, over the previous records on a year-on-year basis.

"Even if the past 10 days were colder, the average temperature of the whole month is higher than before," Guo explained.

Selling out their stocks of robe-long down jackets of a domestic brand is totally out of expectations, said Yuan Xian, a saleswoman with the Grand Pacific store.

The imaginative would-be popular designs, mostly thin and half-length down jackets with less feathers, are hung aside on a shelf signing "special offer."

A majority provinces along the Yangtze and north of it have recorded big snow storms in the past week.

In Shanghai, the heaviest snow storm in recent years caused havoc on Thursday, temporarily shutting down all the highways and elevated expressways and caused many accidents and injuries.

Over 40 tons of industrial salt helped to melt the snow.

After a whole night's effort, nearly all the main roads were cleaned up and reopened, some highways to nearby cities are still closed," said Sun Guofu, an official from Traffic and Patrol Police Brigade under the Shanghai Public Security Bureau.

Altogether, 86 accidents were reported to have happened on highways Thursday before roads were closed at about 9 pm, which doubled the usual record.

Hospitals also recorded a sharp increase in the patients who fell with fractures.

Ruijin Hospital received more than 20 patients from about 3 pm to 8 pm on Thursday.

In Guangzhou, some 40 trains scheduled to reach the cities were delayed on Thursday since they had to pass through snowstorm-hit areas, including Central China's Hunan Province, and East China's Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Anhui Provinces.

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