Christmas Twins' Bash

China's ``backside shovers'' gear up for New Year By Andrew Browne SHANGHAI, Jan 6 (Reuter) - The ``backside shovers'' and ``human ladders'' in the Shanghai train station are limbering up for the lunar New Year holiday. In just a few weeks what will probably rank as the greatest movement of people in history will be under way in China. As many as 200 million passengers will be packed aboard trains, many of them shoved through high box-car windows with a firm hand to the seat of their pants. Sinewy-armed and long-legged ``shovers'' and ``ladders'' ensure everybody gets home in time for the most important Chinese celebration. Vast numbers of surplus rural labourers, 80 million, by some estimates, have left villages in backward provinces to seek work in rich cities along the coast. Once every year they return to their families laden with gifts wrapped up in cloth bundles. At the end of the holidays millions more flood back to the cities. Most travel by train, some by bus or river steamer. During the 60-day period straddling last year's lunar New Year in February the creaking rail network handled an awesome 185.39 million passenger journeys. ``A migrant worker tidal wave,'' is how Shanghai's Xin Min Evening News described it. ``For the railways it is nothing but a painful memory.'' It's a queasy feeling for Beijing, too. Since ancient times the deepest fear of Chinese leaders has been peasant rebellion, and so the sight of a ragged army of farm workers fleeing unemployment sets raw nerves jangling. Ticket riots, highway robberies, pickpockets and accidents causing death and injury are the immediate worry. It is a crowd-control headache of gigantic proportions, but this year concern goes even further: there is a panicky feeling that the holiday crush, like the migrant population itself, has grown too big to handle. State television reported this week that Chinese would make 1.3 billion trips by public buses, trains, ships and planes over the holiday period, a six percent increase over last year's holiday traffic, which severely strained China's transport system. For decades after the 1949 communist revolution Beijing made people stay put in one place, unless they had a very good reason to travel. Ration coupons and a household registration system kept Chinese immobile. Mass travel aboard trains, or ``iron roosters'' as the Chinese call them, was possible briefly during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s when young Red Guards took off on joy-rides spreading Mao Tsetung Thought. Then, in the early 1980s, Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms brought freedom of travel for almost everyone. Desperate measures are being devised to stem the flow around the coming lunar New Year on January 31. If these fail, authorities say the number of train journeys could jump to 200 million. That represents a large chunk of China's 1.2 billion people. It's eight Canadas, five Spains, one Indonesia, or 80 percent of the population of the United States. ``This is becoming a monumental pressure,'' Shanghai's Wenhui Daily said. In Shanghai, many of the 3.5 million people planning to leave the city by train will fork out 10 yuan ($1) to have their backsides shoved through window slits. And that's just the first indignity. Once a passenger is squeezed into a carriage, it is impossible to move around. Four tickets are sold for every seat on a hard bench. As many as nine people and all their baggage settle in each lavatory cubicle. The Xin Min Evening News reported one way around the toilet problem. ``Male comrades are issued with a plastic bag, female comrades with a nappy.'' The Ministry of Railways is adding 41 trains over the holiday this year, up 14 percent over 1994. A total of 590,000 buses will be pressed into service. Sichuan province, China's most populous region, will lay on 95 ships each with a capacity of 50,000 people. At the same time, Beijing has set a target of keeping 60 percent of migrants at their workplaces. Employers will be encouraged to pay migrants generous overtime bonuses for working over the holiday. Those who want time off but agree not to go home will be offered a financial reward. Big cities have been banned from hiring new peasant workers until one month after the holiday season. And if all that doesn't work, Beijing is threatening to raise train ticket prices. None of this worries the ``backside shoving brigade'' too much. Last year, shovers all over China earned a staggering 80 million yuan ($9.4 million) in a two-month period, the Xin Min newspaper said. This year, the word is, there will be even more backsides in need of a push. REUTER

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