Hao Kang and Lei Jie hug each other tightly on the train. (Screenshot photo/CCTV)
A television news report of an ill-timed marriage proposal between two Chinese railway employees moved millions to tears during the Spring Festival holiday.
Hao Kang is a railway engineer who works at the Yulin station in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, and his girlfriend, Lei Jie, is an attendant with a railway connecting the provincial capital Xi'an and Wuhai West Station in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Because they work on different trains on different routes, they only got to meet for one week in 2018.
China Central Television (CCTV) followed their brief meeting during the 2019 Lunar New Year.
According to their schedules, Lei's train stops every day at Yulin station at 12:37 am for only eight minutes. Hao also works at the station and sometimes they are able to get together for the entire eight minutes.
Hao had bought a ring and planned to propose to Lei on Sunday night. He even arrived at the station an hour ahead of time, but Lei's train was behind schedule and the stop lasted only five minutes.
After Lei's train arrived, Hao spent several minutes looking for her and jumped on her train. "I want to come with you to the next station," said Hao hugging his girlfriend. In tears, Lei persuaded Hao to leave her train.
As the departure bell rang, Hao only had time to hand the ring to Lei before getting off the train. He did not get the chance to ask her to marry him.
The CCTV report shows the ill-timed meeting lasted only one minute and 52 seconds.
Many netizens were touched by the couple's love story. "Many railway workers have to work and can't go home for the holiday. This one minute, 52 second video touched them so deeply," wrote a netizen.
Lei and Hao's love story has been viewed on Weibo nearly 200 million times as of Monday.
