Young Couple Die in Accident on Way Home for Spring Festival
by Peter Barefoot on Thursday, February 7, 2013
From QQ: Husband & Wife Riding Motorcycle Home Suffer Traffic Accident, 1-Year-Old Child Orphaned
February 3, the 23rd day of the twelfth month of the lunar year, aka “the Little New Year” [the day when Chinese people begin to prepare for the Spring Festival Holiday], a terrible traffic accident happened in Wuzhou of Guangxi province, on the border of the Guangxi and Guangdong provinces. A young couple who were riding a motorcycle on their way home for the Spring Festival Holiday from Guangdong’s Jiangmen to Guangxi’s Pingnan were hit by a dump truck. Both of them died instantly at the scene.
At the scene of the incident, the deceased’s brother and sister-in-law collapsed on the flower-bed by the side of the road, the two of them from time to time crying in each other’s arms, raising a cell phone in hand to tell the family back home the bad news, but then putting it down and hanging up just as it was brought close to the ear.
At 9:45am on February 3rd, about 1km away from the Wufeng Level 1 Toll Station, the couple crashed head on with a dump truck heading the other way, dying instantly at the scene. According to Wuzhou police, the location where the incident happened was less than 60m away from the slow zone dedicated to the “motorcycle army” [referring to the large number of motorcycles riding together carrying people on their way back to their hometowns that are commonly seen during this holiday season].
The couple who died in the accident had just turned 25 years old this year. The husband’s name was Zhang Yaoliang, the wife’s name was Lu Jinli. At about 4 o’clock in the morning, they got up while it was still dark, started off from Guangzhou Jiangmen, hoping to get back home in Guangxi Pingnan before evening to have dinner with their 1-year-old son, whom they hadn’t seen in 6 months.
But right at the doorsteps of to their home, this hope shattered. Their bodies lay entwined in blood, with broken motorcycle parts scattered all around them. A black single-shoulder bag containing their everyday savings was tossed aside. Also on the roadside was a broken motorcycle, luggage tied to the back seat.
