Fires on the front page in Shenyang and Chongqing today.
At a match on September 12, an overly enthusiastic fan reacted to a goal by lighting a torch and tossing it off the stands, where it set fire to an advertising banner.
The Shenyang Evening News ran a cover photo of the incident, and reported that the fan in question was arrested for two days and has been banned from attending soccer matches for a year. The Liaoning Football Association has urged rational expressions of support for teams, and the fan club has promised to cheer in a more civilized manner in the future.
The cover of today’s Chongqing Economic Times showed a different kind of fire: yesterday, local police set fire to 3,378 illegal guns they had seized in the six months since March.
The paper provided no breakdown of the types of guns fed to the bonfire, but the reporter noticed that a fair number were replicas or toys.
The guns had to be burnt to remove all traces of explosives before they could be sold as scrap metal.
- Shenyang Evening News (Chinese): Hooligan gets five days, year-long ban
- Chongqing Economic Times (Chinese): 3,378 guns seized over six months set on fire yesterday