国内英语新闻:Chinese head for home in disaster-shadowed festival

However, this year's Mid-autumn Festival was shadowed by disasters.

In central China's Hunan Province, 12 people died as their ferryboat sank Friday. Most of them were students from two primary and middle schools going back for reunion with their parents for the festival.

On the bed of 13-year-old Peng Jiming, a yellow doll lay quietly waiting for its owner.

But gazing at two bags of fruit on the table, her 63-year-old granny knew her granddaughter would never be back to celebrate the festival with her.

For two days, the old lady surnamed Xiao didn't eat anything.

"I brought her up," she said in tears. "She had been so sweet."

In Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, 10 people died in a scaffolding collapse Saturday while two others were killed by toppled wall of a shopping mall.

In eastern China's Anhui Province, Nine people died and 13 others were seriously injured after a bus rear-ended a cement-mixing truck Sunday afternoon.

In online communities many people mourned for the dead.

"The loss of these lives made this occasion, which should have been jubilant, extremely sorrowful," said a netizen nicknamed Qipinzhixian.

"They were supposed to be with their relatives, but accidents took them away forever."

"May the dead rest in peace. May such tragedy never repeat."