And passengers who had been stranded at the above four railway stations were all transported off, said an official with Shanghai Railway Administration, who added they had rented 75 temporary trains to help transport from the above four railway stations more people who wish to travel back home on Wednesday, the eve of Spring Festival.

However, the situation in other parts of the country's snow-hit regions such as Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou seems unlikely to have a change in the next couple of days.

Residents in Enshi Prefecture, Hubei Province, where more than 31,000 households were still without power as of Tuesday, have been using candles since Monday afternoon when a military cargo plane transported 500,000 candles into the area.

Authorities said that they had decided to use the military plane to move the 28.66 tons of candles because air was the quickest way to bring light to the people of Enshi. An Enshi official said that this was the first time that the prefecture had received disaster relief via a military transport.

Meanwhile, Chenzhou, a city of about four million in the central province of Hunan, began its 11th day without electricity and tap water. More than 5,000 electricians, including 2,000 summoned from other provinces, were struggling to repair damaged power lines and pylons.

About 1,000 pylons and poles have collapsed under the weight of ice and snow, which means the local electricity grid that took decades to construct had been totally destroyed, experts said on Tuesday, adding it was impossible to restore the grid in a short time.

Road traffic was in chaos in the city as traffic lights were not working. People queued in front of the few banks with generators to draw cash.