Dream tickets

The second phase of ticket sales for the 2008 Olympic Games will close on Sunday with more than 340,000 people having booked more than 2 million tickets, the Beijing Organizing Committee (BOCOG) said on Monday. By noon on Monday, BOCOG had received more than 340,000 orders, and about 90 percent of the orders were over the Internet, while the rest came through Bank of China branches. BOCOG also received bookings for 23,000 tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Paralympic Games. Orders were relatively centralized and rhythmic; gymnastics, table tennis, diving, synchronized swimming and artistic gymnastics were already overbooked, according to the statement. Tickets will be allocated by a random drawing, but the date of the lottery has yet to be announced. A total of 7 million tickets for the August 8-24 Games are available to the general public, with nearly three quarters reserved for domestic sales. The first batch of 1.6 million tickets was allocated by lottery earlier this year.

Cracking open the Egg

On December 20, the National Center for Performing Arts displayed its brilliant splendor with a trial light check. With the lighting facilities now in place, the theater is expecting to begin celebrating its first performance season. The international performance season runs from December 22, 2007 to April 6, 2008, during which 180 performances of 78 plays are scheduled, one-third of which are foreign plays. The upcoming shows include operas, dance dramas, concerts and modern dramas as well as Chinese operas. Authorities estimate that 300,000 people will enjoy the performances during the first show season.

Meeting her match

Kailee Wells, a 10-year-old adopted American girl who was dying from bone marrow failure but survived thanks to a transplant, finally met her savior, Wu Lin, on Thursday. Born in Hunan Province, the youngster was abandoned as a baby on the steps of a training institute for teachers in the city of Changde. She spent a year in an orphanage before the Wells family of Albuquerque, New Mexico, adopted her. She fell ill with aplastic anemia at age 5, but no match was found in China until 2005. Wang, a father to a young son, was found to be a suitable candidate. The number of China's bone marrow donors on the registry has grown from 10s of thousands in 2003 to 700,000 today, thanks to an increased understanding of the procedure among ordinary Chinese citizens.

Saving the day

A total of 188 buildings in Beijing built within the past 160 years are to be given government protection under a new ruling issued this week, according to Legal Evening newspaper. They include several well-known landmarks erected since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. The ruling, which was released last week, marks a change of tack for the city government and its cultural relics department. Wen Zongyong, deputy chief of Beijing's planning commission, says: "Beijing is home to many spectacular buildings, but their protection had not been on the government's agenda until very recently." Buildings to be protected include the 50-year-old Great Hall of the People, where the annual session of the National People's Congress is held; schools built by missionaries in the 19th century; and the city's first water works, which dates from 1908. The buildings are split into two groups: Those build from 1840-1949 and those constructed between 1950-76.

Free birds

Starting from January 1 of next year, citizens who buy thrushes will be fined up to 10 times the going price paid for the birds. The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry issued on December 17 a new list of wild animals under municipal protection. The list includes 57 new kinds of creatures, including thrushes and myhahs.

In March of 1989, 168 animal species were included on the protection list issued by the municipal government. This is the first time the government has tweaked the list in 18 years. Seven non-local birds found in Beijing are now also on the protection list. Citizens who currently own these birds can still keep them. They can also hand them in to the wild animal protection agencies if they don't want to raise them. But they are not allowed to trade these birds. Heavy fines will be levied if they break the rules. Anyone who illegally hunts, transports, relegates, sells or purchases thrushes or mynahs will be fined one to 10 times the average retail price of the tweeters. The fine is determined according to the bird's distribution in Beijing, its ecological value in nature and its trading price in the market.

A titanic discovery

Dubbed the "Titanic of China", a sunken ship from the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the largest Chinese wreck discovered from that period, was successfully hauled from its watery grave in Guangdong Province on December 22. The ship was heavily laden with a cargo of ceramic, gold and jewel exports when she sank. The 30-m-long vessel went down with 80,000 cultural relics aboard about 60 km west of Hailing Island near Yangjiang more than eight centuries ago. Labeled Nanhai No 1, the shipwreck was salvaged by professionals under the Ministry of Communications (MOC) and the Guangdong salvage bureau. After it breaches the surface, the wooden wreck was housed in a huge iron container, which, together with seabed mud encasing the find, will weigh about the same as 15 train carriages. The shipwreck and its rich treasure was loaded on a cargo ship to be ferried next week to a specially built glass house on the beach of Yangjiang.

(China Daily 12/26/2007 page19)