March 24, 2008
Free admittance for 29 museums
The headline story: there will be 33 museums that will offer free admittance in Beijing. 29 of them are free of charge as of today, but visitors will need to book, either by registering on the museum’s website or calling. None of the listed museums are major attractions for international tourists.
Hukou matters
The small headline and teaser on the left of the page is about 50 high school seniors who were not able to register for this year’s National college entrance exam because of problems with their hukou (residence permit).
One of the students, surnamed Meng, has been educated in Beijing since kindergarten, and his parents have worked and lived in the capital for more than ten years. In the hope that Meng could take the exam in Beijing, his parents spent more than one hundred thousand yuan to buy him a “collective hukou” (集体户口) which proved as useless as his original Henan hukou.
Residents of Beijing, as the capital and one of the biggest cities of the country, enjoy favorable higher education opportunities. This obvious inequality has long been a subject of controversy and also encourages some so-called “education immigrants” to take the risk coming to Beijing to seek a better chance to go to university.
Fire put out
The big picture on the front-page is about a fire that was put out in Xicheng District in Beijng this morning. It was caused by gas explosion.