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Mourners defy cold chill to pay respects to stampede victims
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It is 11:35pm -- a week after the New Year's Eve stampede that crushed 36 young people to death. A small crowd of mourners defied the chilly cold and the wet weather to pay their respects to the victims, who had walked to the Bund last week to ring in the New Year.
The seventh day after the death is of special significance in Chinese tradition. It is believed that the soul of the deceased revisit their families before departing for good. Family members burn paper offerings and prepare a feast for the departed individuals to enable them to have a peaceful afterlife.
But for a tragedy of this scale, the tradition is not limited to family members alone. Even on a cold, windy and wet evening, local residents -- known or unknown to the victims -- came with flowers, lit candles and mourned the lives lost in the stampede at Chen Yi Square.
After 10pm, groups of two and three people walked along a long barricaded passage set up by the Huangpu District government and placed white chrysanthemum and other flowers on the grassland in front of the statue of the former Shanghai Mayor Chen Yi.
They placed the flowers, bowed and prayed in silence and then left.
An old man knelt and touched the forehead to the ground after putting a large bunch of chrysanthemum in front of the statue. After a few silent minutes he turned to walk away only to return to try and light the candles left behind by other mourners but the light rain made it difficult.
More mourners came at about 10:30pm when the rain stopped briefly and the square became a bit lighter. Those who did not bring flowers picked the chrysanthemums arranged by the district government close by. The temperature dropped to about three degrees Celsius with a strong cold wind blowing from the Huangpu River. But that did not deter mourners as the crowd swelled around 11:30pm -- the time of the tragedy a week ago.
A young couple, who came around midnight, told Shanghai Daily they were passing through and stopped by to wish peace to the victims.
Local police monitored the Bund and its neighboring areas. Officers were seen guarding the Zhongshan Road S1 with SWAT vans parked a short distance between each other. Each nearby road leading to the Bund was being monitored by at least two police officers.
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