In the first eight days of the Chinese Year of the Dog, 1.3 million passengers traveled via a pivotal railway hub in downtown Guangzhou, the local railway authorities said.

The passenger-flow reported between Jan. 29 and Feb. 5 was 10 percent down from the same period last year.

Guangzhou Railway Station received 170,000 passenger arrivals on Sunday, down 25 percent year-on-year. Despite the decline in arrivals, one passenger train pulled in at the station every three minutes on average.

On Sunday, more than 405,000 passengers arrived at the Guangzhou-centered Pearl River Delta. By Sunday, at least 1 million migrant workers from central China's Hunan Province alone had arrived at the area in the post-Spring Festival passenger rush.

Guangzhou Railway Group has forecast more passengers to arrive in the booming southern city over the coming weekend, when students attending colleges in Guangzhou will come back for the spring semester and more migrant workers will return after the Lantern Festival -- the 15th day of the Chinese New Year that traditionally marks the end of the Spring Festival.

The group has opened up a number of temporary exits to evacuatepassengers in time and cancelled some freight trains to ease the pressure on passenger transport.

"There were crowds of passengers all right, but the railway station was in good order and I didn't feel too cramped," said a passenger, surnamed Wang, who arrived from Hengyang in Hunan Province on Sunday.

(Xinhua News Agency February 7, 2006)