Two types of buses for the 2008 Olympic Games were unveiled yesterday in
Beijing, adorned with Peking opera masks on their bodies, according
to Beijing-based newspaper The First's report.
In Peking opera, there are four main types of roles: sheng
(male), dan (young female), jing (painted face, male), and chou
(clown, male or female). The buses chose the jing's mask designs to
be painted on their bodies, The First's reported on December
19. The eye-catching buses were disclosed by the Beijing Jinghua
Coach Co., LTD.
One red and black bus is fully covered with opera masks, with a
semitransparent jing's mask painted on the front. All the masks
were chosen from the classic Chinese novel Romance of Three
Kingdoms, combining two main characters' (Guan Yu and Jiang
Wei) facial features in Peking Opera.
The designer said that Peking opera is one of China's seminal
cultural elements and that to choose the opera mask is to combine
the traditional Chinese culture with the humanistic Olympics. The
red color stands for devotion and loyalty, and the black represents
honesty and righteousness. This type of bus will mainly operate in
the Olympic activity fields and media village in 2008.
Another type of bus looked more modern, silver grey and designed
in clipper-built pattern. The bus is equipped with an
electro-motioned pedal for the disabled and uses non-pollutant
fuels. The lengthened and widened seats were newly developed to
consider the stature of foreign athletes.
The company staff said two buses will be perfected following the
advice of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the
XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG). After the Games, the buses will be slightly
refitted and operate in the daily bus lines. Beijing citizens will
first see the Olympic buses among the trolleybuses.
(China.org.cn by Zhou Jing, December 20, 2006)
