日全食时大批追逐者涌入中国

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Anticipation is mounting for the moment the sun will slip behind the moon over Shanghai, touted as one of the best spots to watch the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century.

"The moon is going to block the sun completely for five to six minutes."

"I like it. I figure it's like really special and it's gonna happen only once in my life."

Armed with special eclipse viewing glasses tourists have flown thousands of miles to witness one of nature's grandest spectacles in China. Charles Fulco, a middle school astronomy teacher from New York is a professional eclipse chaser.

"That you can't find words to adequately describe it, you become addicted, you need to see the next one, you count the days and years until the next one. It's nothing else on earth compares to it to be standing in the shadow of a moving object a quarter of million miles away."

"Well, this is something magic, you know, it is something she would never see again."

"I wait for the total eclipse, I think, for forty years."

The eclipse will plunge cities from India to China into darkness making it perhaps the most viewed eclipse in human history, mystifying and terrifying at once, especially for those who may not understand what is happening. In ancient China, eclipses were feared and often vastly misunderstood.

"A long time ago Chinese people didn't know what to think when the sky went black," says this man," they thought a dragon from the heavens was eating the sun.

Anticipation's building almost as much as anxiety. It is sunny now, but forecasts in Shanghai are predicting rain. Tourists who’ve travelled from around the world to see this are scrambling to change their plans, consulting satellite maps, cloud counts and good old-fashioned instincts in hopes of finding an opening in the clouds anywhere.

Some are rebooking plane tickets last minute, others are staying put.

It’s a tough call.

"Oh, I'm dying already, are you kidding? This is crazy. Came 12 thousand miles for five and a half minutes of totality. That should tell you right there that it’s gotta be the best thing you could have ever seen.”

So whatever the weather for whoever is watching, when the heavens darken over China, all eyes will be on the sky.

Emily Chang, cnn, Shanghai.

A tough call: a difficult decision, a hard choice