Build leading school
1.5亿打造名校
Photo by Yao Fan



December 25 witnessed the ceremony of the completion of Xiamen Foreign Languages School, Haicang Branch. Construction of the new branch (senior middle school section), covering an area of 81,600 square meters with a total investment of RMB 150 million, was officially started on March 18, 2003; the new branch officially started admitting students on September 1, 2004. The school has seized the opportunity created by its development off the island to build Xiamen's largest ever government-sponsored boarding senior middle school, which now includes 20 classes and 1,036 students.

 

 

Economics

Foreign trade exceeds USD 20 bln.
外贸首破200亿美元
The total value of Xiamen's imports and exports from January to November this year reached USD 21.68 billion, breaking the USD 20 billion mark for the first time, jumping 29.2% over the same period last year. Of the total value, exports were worth USD 12.47 billion, up 31.9%, and imports were worth USD 9.21 billion, up 25.8%.

Xiamen and Intel team up
厦门公司与英特尔合作
On December 21, Xiamen Taiji Information Technology Development Co., Ltd. and US-based Intel Corp. officially signed a partnership agreement to develop network game software in an all-around manner. This is the first time that Intel has ever built a partnership of such a scale in Fujian Province. The first product of the partnership will be the "Childhood" network game that will be launched soon.

Local property price reaches record level
商品住宅均价创新高
The average price of commodity housing and second-hand housing in Xiamen continued its upward tendency in November, with commodity housing commanding an average price of RMB 4,622 per square meter.

 

 

Society

10 street artists to be licensed for performance
10位街头艺人明年持证上岗
Gulangyu Islet Street Musical Artists' Qualifications Test, the first one of its kind in China, was held recently. Ten of the 22 street artists who took the test will be awarded a license for their performance after January 1, 2005. Skills of these artists include guitar playing and singing, folk song performance, electronic organ playing, and flute solo playing; some of the street artists have demonstrated a strong artistic merit.

Float parade to celebrate new spring
花车巡游贺春禧
Over the 20-day period after the press conference on the planned float parade on November 30, the Organizing Committee turned in a good performance, with 25 entities expressing interest in sponsoring 22 floats. So far, 16 of the sponsors have signed agreements, and the rest are still being screened.

Zhongshan Road to charge parking fee after New Year's Day
中山路车位拟元旦后收费
After the imminent New Year's Day, drivers will have to pay for parking their cars on Zhongshan Road. The parking fee will be RMB 5 for any length of time within an hour and RMB 5 for each additional hour.

 

 

Transport

Siming Road to reopen to traffic ahead of New Year's Day
思明路元旦前通车
After over two months of construction, the renovation of the century-old South and North Siming Roads (Zhenhai Road - Xiahe Road Section) is nearing completion; the newly renovated sections of the two roads will be completely reopened to traffic ahead of the New Year's Day.

Japanese passengers surge
日本旅客最频繁出入厦门
As a result of the diversion of passengers through the direct Xiamen-Kinmen sea link, the number of Taiwanese passengers traveling to Xiamen via Hong Kong or Macao has been declining year by year. At the same time, with the increasing personnel flow between China and Japan and South Korea, Xiamen has received a total of 99,000-plus Japanese passengers so far this year. This allows Japan to surpass Singapore, from which 80,600 passengers came, to become Xiamen Port's top source nation of passengers.

Zhanglong expressway opened to traffic
漳龙高速公路28日通车
An opening ceremony for the much-anticipated Zhangzhou-Longyan Expressway was held on Dec. 28, signifying the complete opening of the entire length of the Xiamen-Longyan Expressway, which will shorten the journey between the two cities to merely two hours.

Traffic offense carries a fine up to RMB 2, 000
交通违法最高罚两千
Under the new Fujian Province Penalty Measures for Roadway Traffic Safety Offenses (Provisional), which will become effective on January 1, 2005, any driver turning over his/her vehicle to a person without a driver's license will face a penalty of RMB 2,000 and anyone who honks his/her horn in a no-horn area will be liable for an RMB 200 fine.

 

 

City News
Edited by Lily

Beijing 北京

One million facing problems as ID cards expire
百万人身份证即将逾期
More than one million citizens in Beijing, may encounter a "no identification" situation as their first-generation ID cards are set to expire by New Year's Day and a second-generation card has yet to be applied for.
Measures include offering makeshift second-generation cards and conducting ID card distribution services on weekends and workday evenings. The shift is expected to finish by the end of 2008, and both cards will co-exist before the replacement is complete.

Christmas dinner prices hard to swallow
圣诞大餐价格不菲
High-end hotels in Beijing sold costly Christmas Eve dinners, charging up to 2,588 yuan (US$ 310) per person.
The most expensive was the downtown five-star Tianlun Dynasty Hotel, with a buffet dinner, an evening gala and raffle.
In recent years, prices of Christmas dinners at luxury hotels have continued to climb in Beijing due to their popularity with corporations, who buy tickets to the dinners as year-end treats for their clients or employees. However, room for further price growth is limited.

Parking price to rise
停车费将上调
The government of Beijing has decided not to limit the number of cars in the city in the near future, but instead improve management of the parking lots downtown and heighten the price of parking gradually.
The government encourages residents to commute by public transportation facilities, and has planned to improve public transportation facilities to cater to the demand of residents. Before 2008, all the old-fashioned buses will be updated.

Shanghai 上海

Shanghai tightens outdoor ad controls
监管户外广告
A new regulation promising a firmer grip on Shanghai's outdoor advertisement facilities will kick off next February.
The new regulation will replace a former version from 1991; the rules will bring some 20,000 outdoor billboards under better control and stipulate standards for the future ones.
Shanghai started a campaign to remove potentially unsafe outdoor billboards in the middle of last year after some fell during windy weather.

Arthritis drug sells despite concerns
慎用关节炎止痛药
Celebrex, a painkiller prescribed to people with arthritis, is still selling well in Shanghai even though US experts recently found an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes for patients taking high dosages of the drug.
The State Food and Drug Administration vowed to closely follow a US investigation into the drug.
Local drug authorities said they haven't received any orders from the central government to pull the medicine off store shelves and explained that the safety problems were only found in clinical trials that used a larger dosage than that used to treat arthritis.
US-based Pfizer Inc, the drug's producer, also claimed it doesn't plan to remove the medicine from shelves or recall it, but says people with heart disease should not take the medicine.

Home care for seniors popular
家庭护理老人服务受推崇
About 18,400 Shanghai senior citizens have received in-home nursing care since the service was first offered in the city in 2000.
About 70 percent of the seniors received free service, while the rest paid part of the nursing fees.
Home-care service will become the most popular way to care for the elderly, though relatively few people use the service currently.
Elderly people can enjoy qualified service by professionals without saying farewell to their loving home.

Guangzhou 广州

Minimum wage raised to bring workers back
最低工资上调吸引员工
The minimum wage was raised in Guangzhou on December 1, answering calls to improve people's livelihoods and addressing the problem of a lack of migrant workers in the city.
Two different standards were applied to various districts in the city based on their economic development.
In short, more affluent districts must pay a minimum wage of 684 yuan (US$82) per month, less well-off districts pay 574 yuan (US$69). Most districts will have to pay the higher rate.

Fake cigarette makers closed, 20 detained
查封假烟
Five counterfeit cigarette production bases have been cracked down on in Guangdong over the past days and at least 20 suspects have been detained.
Law enforcement personnel seized a large quantity of cigarette production equipment, production lines, tobacco, finished and semi-finished products and plenty of other raw materials worth millions of US dollars.
Fake cigarette production and sales usually reach peak periods during the new year and the traditional Chinese Spring Festival that falls on February 9.

IC cards for kids' security
接孩子需出示IC卡
Parents of children in more than 100 kindergartens in Guangdong are now required to use IC Cards when collecting their children.
They have to scan their cards through a computer system before entering the kindergartens. The cards contain the parents' data, and the name, class and school hours of the children. Security staff will check the parents' identities before allowing them access.
The cards have been introduced for security reason to guard against kidnappings and injuries to children.
Many kindergartens had been hiring middle-aged women to guard the doors.

65% hike for festival bus fares
长途车假日上调限65%
Fares for long-distance coaches will rise by up to 65 percent during the festival traffic peak from Jan. 25 to March 5, 2005.
Express coaches departing from Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Dongguan, Huizhou and Foshan cities will be allowed to raise fares by up to 65 percent from Jan. 25 to Feb. 8, the Lunar New Year's Eve.
Meanwhile, express coaches departing from other cities will be allowed to raise fares by up to 45 percent from Jan. 25 to March 8. Express coaches departing Guangzhou can raise fares by up to 65 percent from Feb. 9 to March 5, while express coaches departing from other cities will be allowed to raise fares by up to 45 percent.

Chongqing 重庆

Nanmu trees found
发现7棵楠木
The forest workers of Yunyang County found 7 nanmu trees in Lishu Village, Gaoyang Town on December 22. The trees are 20 meters high and some thick tree trunks are 15 meters in diameter. Nanmu trees are under third-class protection in China.

A meeting for recruitment and employment of re-settlers
复员兵及移民供需会
A meeting for recruitment and employment of the re-settlers in the Three Gorges Dam Areas of the Yangtze River was held in Yunyang County, Chongqing. 43 companies gave more than 500 job positions at the meeting.

Hong Kong 香港

Guangdong, Hong Kong to battle pollution
穗港联手抵制污染
Starting in the first quarter of 2005, both sides will jointly launch 16 monitoring stations to further monitor the air quality in the southern Chinese region, particularly in the prosperous Pearl River Delta that borders Hong Kong and Macao. The online monitoring stations are expected to cover all the cities in the Pearl River Delta in the next few years.
The quickly growing number of vehicles are the cause of more than 80 per cent of the air pollution in Guangdong and have become the culprit of the province's worsening air.

Tallest hotel in China
将建中国最高酒店
The US Hotel company, Ritz-Carlton, plans to open a 300-room hotel in Hong Kong in 2009 which will be a showcase of contemporary design, as well as the highest hotel in the world.
The planned Ritz-Carlton will soar above Hong Kong's skyline and harbour, becoming a landmark structure from its strategic location above Kowloon Station on the Hong Kong Airport Railway line.
Additionally, a letter of intent has been signed to open a second Ritz-Carlton hotel in Shanghai on Century Boulevard in the heart of Pudong's Lujiazui District.

Customs close fake Chinese medicine ring
海关查处假中药
Hong Kong's customs officers have shut down a syndicate that produced counterfeit proprietary Chinese medicine, arresting nine people and seizing 740 thousand dollars worth of fake medicated oil and balm.
Officers raided six commercial and industrial units, closed a production and packaging center, seized about 17,000 bottles of counterfeit medicated oil and about 1,000 bottles of balm bearing two brand names.
A customs investigation is underway.

Taipei 台北

Spiderman climbs world's tallest building
"蜘蛛侠"攀世界第一楼
A French urban climber who calls himself Spiderman climbed to the top of the world's tallest building -Taipei 101 on Saturday .
Alain Robert, 42, took almost four hours to reach the top of the 1,679-foot building. The climb took him nearly twice as long as he had expected, partly because of dreary weather. Although he's climbed many of the world's tallest structures without the use of a rope, he climbed with one, likely due to wind and rain.

Motorola to launch 30 handset models in 2005
摩托罗拉30新款2005登场
Motorola will roll out about 30 mobile phones in Taiwan in 2005. The handset vendor intends to highlight its third-generation (3G) technologies with several models.
Motorola will take a 28% market share in 2005. Recent statistics compiled by Taiwan mobile-phone distributors state that Motorola retained its lead in the Taiwan handset market in November, with a 20.6% market share, even though Motorola's share slid about one percentage point sequentially.

Suspend US apple imports
终止美苹果进口
Taiwan has suspended imports of apples from the United States, its main supplier of the fruit, after discovering moth larvae in shipments from three U.S. states.
The codling moth is considered a major pest affecting crops of apples, pears, quince and walnut in Europe, Asia and North America. They were found during inspections on cargoes from Washington and California.
The United States has not yet responded to the suspension. Taiwan relies on imports to meet more than 90 percent of its apple demand. Most apples imported from the U.S. come from Washington state.