I just completed a journey by train from southern China during which I passed through some of the areas hardest hit by the disastrous snow in early January. The destruction is easy to spot - the villages, paddy fields and normally evergreen hills festooned with bamboos and firs are blanketed in white, reminding me of the snowy scenes I used to see when I worked in Xinjiang.

And the impact of the calamity lingers on, even as the severe weather may have passed its peak.

It was a disaster of a continental proportions, hitting 20 province-level territories, or around two-thirds of the country. Among them, Henan, Anhui, Hubei and Hunan - the very center of the nation's main transport arteries (both railways and highways) - occupy an area equal in size to Germany, the UK and Switzerland combined.