The man was injured by the high-voltage cable on the train's roof, and the girlfriend is now keeping vigil by his bedside at a hospital in Guangzhou.

As the all-important Chinese New Year on Thursday looms, hundreds of thousands of stranded Chinese outside the main Guangzhou railway station are growing more anxious and desperate to get home.

Once, a desperate mob stormed a bus, mistakenly thinking it was shuttling passengers to the day's last departing trains.

They pried open doors with their fingers and elbowed their way into the hijacked bus. Some climbed in through the rear window as women inside shrieked and helpless police yelled: 'It's not going to the station!'

Hopelessly outnumbered, some 2,000 riot and army police in this southern Chinese city fought to hold back crowds of hundreds of thousands of mainly migrant workers surging forward at the slighest hint of an opening to a train platform over the past week.

Amid the scramble, tightly packed suitcases were torn open, their contents of clothes, umbrellas, toys and food flying into the air.

'I have lived in Guangzhou for 16 years, and this is the most chaotic year I've ever seen,' factory worker Li Gang told AFP.

Officials said the rail service in Guangzhou could start to return to normal later yesterday, with 100 trains due to depart, close to the usual number, state media said.

But the problem is clearing the massive backlog of one million passengers stranded in the city, a transport hub for the millions of migrant workers who toil all year in the factories of southern China.

They were stranded because freak winter storms have severed the northern parts of the busy Guangzhou-Beijing rail line.

Across China, more than 100 million people have been hit by three weeks of blizzards and icy weather.

Despite pleas for the stranded millions to stay in Guangdong for the festival, which starts on Thursday, workers kept streaming into the railway station over the past week.

Around 240,000 people gathered outside the railway station yesterday.

Among them yesterday was Mr Chen Pakqing, a 22-year-old graphic designer, who highlighted the danger of a stampede.

'We were stuck right in the middle of a crowd. We couldn't move an inch. My friend and I tried to leave but couldn't get out,' he told AFP.

'When we were allowed to move nearer to the station, a girl in front of me dropped her bag on the floor and wanted to pick it up. Just as she bent down, the crowd surged and was on the verge of trampling her.'

He stepped in and managed to hold the crowd back.

'It was really scary,' he added. 'Once you slip there's danger.'

Mr Li Kuochun, 28, said he was trying to get back to Hunan province. He said people were pushing out of sheer frustration.

'I'm quite worried there will be a stampede,' he told AFP.

'I just try to walk slowly but people keep pushing. You're squeezed between people and can hardly move or breathe.

'But I think it's worth the danger and risking my safety to go home and see my family. They are all back there and I really miss them.'

But for one woman, the rush to get home turned fatal. Ms Li Hongxia, a watch factory worker trying to get home to central Hubei province, fell and was trampled to death last Friday.

Another traveller, Hunan native Zhang Chi, said it was sheer desperation that made her and her boyfriend Li Manjun jump onto a train.

'We went to the train station to try our luck twice, but we couldn't board the train,' she told Yangcheng Evening News.

'Everybody's hurrying home, so we had no choice but to jump.'

ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE