Firecracker booms rocked urban Beijing with bright flashes
during this year's Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, challenging the
city's 12-year-old ban on the festive but often dangerous
explosives.
Even within the Second Ring Road, the innermost areas of
Beijing's city proper, crackers were constantly heard, set off by
unidentified residents, though posters reading "firecrackers
forbidden" are seen in nearly every street.
Most Beijingers seem quite used to this kind of defiance which
has been seen nearly every year since firecrackers were first
banned in 1993.
This year, however, the city put a special office in charge of
the firecracker ban and expanded the banned areas beyond the Fifth
Ring Road into some densely inhabited areas on the outskirts.
Before the holiday, the office sent a short message to cell
phone subscribers to remind them of the firecracker ban.
On Tuesday, the Chinese New Year's Eve, Beijing police sent 130,
000 policemen, market regulators and volunteers to patrol the urban
streets, but firecrackers were still constantly heard, particularly
in areas near the Fourth and Fifth ring roads.
"We stepped up publicity work weeks before the holiday and it
worked to some extent," said Vice-Mayor Ji Lin. But still, he
admitted some areas were "out of control."
Some residents had bought firecrackers from rural markets
beforehand and set them off when they heard others first do so.
The booming of firecrackers mark the passing of the old year,
said a Beijing resident surnamed Meng, who is firmly against the
ban. "That's the tradition handed down from generation to
generation," he said.
Meng confessed he led his family to light firecrackers in his
downtown neighbourhood on the eve of the Chinese New Year because
he "used to do the same every year as a child."
Even a lawyer set off firecrackers near his downtown resident in
Dongzhimen, where the explosive is strictly banned.
"Childhood memories still cling to me and I cannot help lighting
firecrackers to celebrate the family festival and particularly to
make my son happy," said Wang Xiaohui, 37, who has been an attorney
in Beijing for 15 years.
"The Chinese New Year in the traditional sense is a carnival,"
said Zheng Yimin, vice-chairman of the China Federation of Literary
and Art Circles. "With firecrackers banned, the festival is far
less joyous."
Though Beijing's lawmakers deliberated the residents' call for
removal of the firecracker ban during their annual session in 2004,
the local legislature eventually upheld the ban on safety
grounds.
The firecracker ban office told Xinhua on Saturday that this
year alone, 53 Beijingers were injured by firecrackers on New
Year's Eve on Tuesday as they set off firecrackers.
Two leading downtown hospitals, Tongren and Jishuitan, received
19 people injured by firecrackers during the most festive hours
between 6:00 PM on Tuesday and 1:00 AM on Wednesday. The number of
injured is more or less the same as last year.
But the good news is the city's firemen put out 99 fires caused
by firecrackers on New Year's Eve, down 36 per cent from last year,
said a spokesman from the firecracker ban office.
"It is dangerous to light firecrackers but we cannot ban
everything that is dangerous. We cannot ban cars and buses to avoid
traffic accidents for example," said Zhang Zhongli, an attorney
with Beijing Jiacheng Law Firm.
His view is echoed by many Chinese.
Responding to residents' calls, 105 Chinese cities have removed
the firecracker ban, including Shanghai.
Beijing reports record festival sales
volume
The total sales volume of shops in Beijing in the first four
days of the weeklong Spring Festival period set a record of 739
million yuan (US$89 million) in the Year of Rooster, according to
statistics released Sunday by Beijing Municipal Commerce
Information Service Center.
The number of customers to various department stores in Beijing
on the third day of the Chinese Lunar New Year (last Friday)
increased 15 percent compared with the same day of last year.
Traditionally, Chinese exchange visits among family members or stay
home in the first two days of the Lunar New Year.
Statistics based on 132 shops of 28 local catering companies
showed their total business volume on the fourth day of the Lunar
New Year (last Saturday) came to 5.67 million yuan (US$683,500), a
year-on-year increase of 30 percent.
As the fifth day is traditionally a day for eating dumplings,
Chinese wives thronged into supermarkets from Sunday morning to buy
instant dumplings, or made dumplings by themselves at home. Some
families went to restaurants to enjoy a "Dumpling Feast".
The Spring Festival, which falls on Feb. 9 this year, is the
country's most important traditional festival, or an occasion of
family reunion and a grand shopping season.
More Beijingers donate blood in holiday
season
A pair of anonymous lovers donated blood voluntarily at the
ongoing Longtan temple fair on Sunday in China's capital to
celebrate the upcoming Valentine's Day.
The blood center under the municipal Red Cross Society called
for more lovers to spend the romantic day by donating blood, so as
to meet the clinical blood demand in Beijing. And on the special
day for lovers, the center will prepare a small gift and a rose for
each blood donor.
At the threshold of the Chinese Lunar New Year that fell on Feb.
9, the center had only 1,000 units (one unit equals to 200 cc) of
blood in store, or one fifth of the normal standard of 5,000 units,
sources with the center said.
To satisfy its pressing needs, the blood center has dispatched
blood collection vehicles to seven temple fairs, including Longtan,
the Temple of Earth and Chaoyang Park, and to the Beijing Railway
Station as well as major downtown shopping malls, according to the
sources.
The center has also invited 14 volunteers to explain basic
knowledge about blood donation aboard every blood collection
vehicle at the temple fairs and malls, the sources added.
In the first two days of the weeklong Spring Festival holiday,
more than 1,400 people donated blood in Beijing, with a daily
donation tripling the regular average, the sources added.
By press time, the blood center has increased its blood storage
to more than 4,000 units, which is able to meet clinical needs for
the holiday season, the sources said.
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency February 14, 2005)