Beijing: Snowed In!

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…
Just like the ones I used to know…

Where — the –

you know, you see freeways shuttin’
truck lines pilin’, pilin’ ‘n’ pilin’
drivers grabbin’ those noodles ‘n’ dinin’
dined and wined and bowl goes for the dumpin’
on the freeway ramps, nowhere goin’
or leadin’ you more to trucks a-pilin’…

Is this the harmonious / harmonized way to greet Santa in the Jing this Christmas season?

Make no mistake about it: If Santa was piloting one of these babies, he’d be on a mission — to make those trucks grow wings. Thankfully, Santa has Them Reindeers, miraculously — and just like the Beijing Subway — jam free.

Yes, snow is finally here for Beijing. This is the Jing’s second. Oddly enough, this bit of snow made a reach south. Tweets recounted of snow as far south as Tianjin and even Jinan, in Shandong. Looks like those reindeers grew some leg power — and sent those powders in white all the way down to the People’s Republic.

Things started to get bad on the 20th already. As I remarked in my post at The Beijingologist at City Weekend:

Updated info from the Beijing traffic police tells the tale: the first-ever freeway to fall prey to the snow was the Jingjintang Freeway, which got bolted at 21:09:36 on December 20. Just a minute later, at 21:10:50, the Jingshen Freeway was bolted. Traffic was diverted off from the Jingjintang Freeway at the Dayangfang central toll plaza near Yizhuang, and Jingshen threw its locks at the final Beijing exit at Xiji. (The cause: that part of the freeway outside Beijing already threw its locks on its own bits.)

Just over 20 minutes later, The Jing’s newest addition to Tianjin, the Jingjin Freeway, got shut. All traffic had to make it over to National Highway 104.

The first snowflakes reachd Tongzhou at 21:33:38. In just over an hour’s time, the snow had reached levels where the 6th Ring Road from Liuyuan Bridge (at the interchange with the Jingmi Highway) had to be sealed through to Taihe Bridge (near the southeastern tip of the Yizhuang Development Area).

Twenty minutes into midnight on the 21st, the Jingping Freeway was shut due to snow invading the Tianjin bit.

Traffic was pretty much frozen across much of the Jing today. Tonghuihe North Road, often an excuse for leaving the Jing via its increasingly sprawling CBD, today sported jams here and there.

My afternoon trip to eastern Beijing saw my car — semi-wet. There were remnants of snow on the eastern 6th Ring Road — and at times the car seemed to steer out of control. Totally unconvinced that this was not enough to wean me away from mass tweeting, I observed on Twitter:

Traffic to Tianjin got hit pretty, pretty badly indeed. All-freeway links were deader than duck-soup, to put it in Roald Dahl BFG-ese. The Jingping Freeway linking Beijing via Tianjin’s Ji County to central Tianjin — DEAD. The Jingshen Freeway (linking to the Jinji Freeway, heading south to central Tianjin) — DEAD. The Jingjintang Freeway, linking Beijing to central Tianjin and Tanggu port — DEAD. The Jingjin Freeway, the one that runs next to the Beijing-Tianjin HSR — DEAD.

Wait. HSR. DEAD?

NOT DEAD. But the HSR today ran like one of those Energizer bunnies that fed on about 99.999% of all the world’s battery supplies — and ran out halfway through. This thing would usually take about 2 to 3 seconds to fully clear a freeway bridge. It cleared the thing today in about 5 to 6 seconds.

(It was being prudent, though. Derailing at 350 km/h carries extremely fatal consequences. And we’ve already had our share of derailed or frozen-in trains earlier this year.)

My back pocket is some kind of permanent home to my Beijing Super Pass, a smart card which, with the version I have, allows you to touch into both the Beijing Subway and Tianjin’s Metro. I use it quite a bit on Metro Line 1. The card’s name: “Beijing-Tianjin One Card”.

Today, it seemed, then, the Tianjin part became momentary history. There was no way to get to Tianjin by road today — not any zippy ways, anyhow.

Meanwhile, @mumuyama was lovin’ it in Tianjin. Haiguangsi Metro station in Tianjin — and the whole area — became white. Next time I’m the Jin, I might even spot that bit of “uncleaned-away” (for lack of a better word) snow at Haiguangsi…