Until this week, the largest crowd I had ever seen was a jubilant 30,000 at a concert by Taiwanese singer Luo Dayou in Shenzhen five years ago. I remember being amazed by the size of that crowd.
Yesterday, I found myself among 180,000 desperate travellers stranded for days at Guangzhou railway station because of the crisis gripping the mainland. I was sardined among them - angry men, howling women and scared babies - and it wasn't amazement I felt; it was fear. The only word that came to mind to describe the scene was 'hell'.
When I arrived at the station at 10am it seemed more crowded than it had been the day before. I was right. Many travellers had been driven away to make room for Premier Wen Jiabao's brief visit on Wednesday - and yesterday they returned.
Most were migrant workers desperate to return home for the Lunar New Year. As a journalist based in Shenzhen, I had talked to them and listened to their stories, observing their plight from the fringes.
But yesterday I joined the crowd and experienced the nightmare first hand. Before I had time to make sense of the situation, I was sucked into the seething mass and lost any sense of direction. All I could see were the backs of heads and necks. Pressed so tightly together it was obvious that many passengers had not taken a shower for several days.
The only thing I could do was keep pace with the crowd. I had to move in quick, small steps; otherwise, I would fall to the ground and be trampled by those behind me. Pushed, shoved and slapped until I was ready to collapse. Horror scenes of a human stampede crossed my mind.