February 22, 2008
Today’s big headline concerns a new campaign designed to guarantee the safety of Beijing at the upcoming Olympic Games. Over the next 39 days, the police will be checking temporary resident permits to make sure that everyone in the city is properly registered. People who fail to obtain the necessary permits may face a fine of up to 50 yuan, reports The Beijing News.
According to the Beijing Government’s website, people over 16 years of age who come to Beijing for business or employment, or who plan to stay in the city over one month, must register with the police as temporary residents.
The front page photo shows a pile of dirt dumped onto a Capital Airport access road by villagers from Guantou County, Tongzhou. The road is the only way to reach one of the construction sites for the new airport; the villagers, upset that they were not being compensated for the use of the road, blocked it in protest.
Other headlines:
- At a press conference yesterday, Hong Kong actor Edison Chen Kwoon-Hei announced that he is quitting the entertainment business forever. The scandal over stolen photograghs of Chen and various Hong Kong actresses has been front-page news in Hong Kong and Taiwan for nearly three weeks; The Beijing News devotes all eight pages of today’s Entertainment section to the scandal and its aftermath.
- The China Meteorological Administration admitted that they did not foresee that the snow storm that paralyzed the country would last twenty days.
- Beijing will close forty additional polluting factories this year as a part of environment protection plan.
- Starting today, the 22nd of every month will be “Give Up Your Seat Day” in Beijing. The city government is calling on bus and subway passengers to give up their seats to the elderly, young children, and the disabled. The 11th of every month has been “Wait in an Orderly Line Day” for more than a year, because the number looks like people standing in a line.
Why 22? The number 2 is pronounced “èr” in Chinese, similar to the letter “R,” which is the initial letter of 让 (“to yield, to give up”) in Pinyin. Additionally, if you squint at it, the number 2 looks a little like a seat.