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Adult diaper sales soar before long trips home
By Liang Qiwen (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-01-24 06:01
GUANGZHOU: Sales of adult diapers are booming as residents prepare themselves
for long-haul journeys home on crowded trains for Lunar New Year.
Passengers queue up
to buy train tickets at a ticket booth in Xi'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi
Province January 10, 2005. As the winter holidays for universities and
colleges are coming, many students flock to the train stations or ticket
booths for tickets in the run-up to Spring Festival, which falls on
February 9 this year.[newsphoto] |
Many
supermarkets in Foshan, a city in South China's Guangdong Province, have
reported an increase in sales of about 50 per cent.
The products, designed for incontinence, have been repositioned at prominent
places on shop shelves since the start of the peak travel season for Spring
Festival began on January 14, Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News reported.
The number of train seats for people returning home for family reunions are
limited because of the huge demand in the period.
It means large numbers of passengers have to buy standing-only tickets and
have to jam into all corners of carriages, even in toilets.
This often makes it almost impossible for passengers to pass through and
reach the toilets and they are forced to go without relieving themselves for the
whole journey.
"In this period, a common train has to transit 2,000 passengers, with only
around 1,000 seating tickets," Zhang Dazhi, an officer of Guangzhou Railway
Group, said.
It is not just crowded conditions on the carriages themselves that people
have to contend with.
Before they can get home, some have to stand in queues for hours to buy train
tickets and also wait with thousands of other people at packed railway stations
for their trains.
Once on the tightly-packed carriages, some passengers have to stand for long
hours, with the journey time from Guangzhou to Beijing, for example, being about
24 hours.
During the peak travel period last year, some passengers even became deranged
on their journeys because of the conditions and jumped out of the carriages.
"The deep-seated concept of a reunion with families for the Spring Festival
prompts people to repeat the journeys, even though they know clearly how
difficult the journeys are," Pan Hong, a psychologist in Guangzhou, told China
Daily.
(China Daily 01/24/2006 page3)
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