This Day, That Year

Item from Feb 19, 1993, in China Daily: Passers-by swarm to buy lottery tickets in front of the Beijing Zoo in the western part of the city. This lottery offers 50,000 yuan as the top prize. Lotteries have become a common scene in China.

Lottery sales in the country reached 368 billion yuan ($56 billion) last year, down 3.8 percent year-on-year, according to the latest statistics released by the Ministry of Finance.

The fall was triggered by the country's first large-scale audit of the industry to curb misuse and tighten supervision on the online lottery sector, analysts said.