This is Beijing-Beijing English blog

“Fou” drum is an ancient Chinese percussion instrument derived from potteries and bronze ware.

China auctioned 1,000 of the 2,008 “Fou” drums which were used in the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games with bidding prices amounting to 52.45 million yuan (about 7.5 million U.S. dollars) on Sunday.

439 buyers participated in the bid

The highest price of a single drum exceed RMB70,000

The drum should not be used for commercial purposes

Collection of Olympic items become new trend.

All 2,008 fou drums- which were used during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games- will be auctioned off next month.

The China Beijing Equity Exchange says 10 drum packages should go for around 2,000 U.S. dollars.

They will be available in an online auction and any left-over drums will be sold individually.

On Friday, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games donated almost 600 items used in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics to China. Some will be put in museums- others, like the drums will be sold.

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Valentine’s Day was hugely popular for marriages in Beijing with 2,689 couples getting spliced on Saturday.

The number showed a rise of nearly 2,000 marriages over the Valentine’s Day last year. It is also the highest figure since Aug.8, 2008, the day the Beijing Olympics opened, said Li Ziwei, chief of the marriage registration section with the municipal department of civil affairs, Sunday.

Haidian District, home to higher learning institutes and hi-tech firms, had the most marriages with more than 600 on Saturday alone.

Li said the wedding boom was not just because it was a Saturday and Valentine’s Day but also because it was an even numbered day according to the lunar Chinese calendar. The Chinese associate even numbers with good luck.

The current economic crisis was also said to be another factor behind the boom. “With the financial crisis, many people, especially young people, have chosen to shift their focus of life from career to family,” said Li.

In China people have to bring their identity card, household register, and three photos to register their marriage. The process might take just a few minutes

Businesses in China are cashing in on the growing popularity of western traditions ahead of Valentine’s Day. Selling products with a theme of love, such as flowers and chocolates, is proving to be lucrative. This year’s day for lovers falls on Saturday.

Perhaps the most global expression of love is the gift of flowers, and China is no exception.

At a flower market in Beijing, stalls are getting ready for Valentine’s Day. Here, flowers of all kinds can be found, but without doubt it’s the red rose that will be the most popular this week.

Florist Chen Junshan expects to sell up to three thousand red roses this weekend, with a bunch of 99 roses going for 1000 yuan.

Valentine’s Day surely provides some shops their best business of the year.

Chocolate is another traditional gift. The heart-shaped ones are the most popular. But some unusual shapes also do very well. There are cars, Mah Jongg tiles, and even chocolates shaped as Chinese chess pieces.

Different from ordinary chocolate shops, this one allows its customers to take an active role in creating the product. After all, a gift made by oneself bears more meaning and is more special.

Chocolate shop customer Zhao Yi said, “I can practice my hand skills, and put my thoughts into it. Everyone can buy things as gifts. This has more meaning because it’s my own design and shows my own feelings. “

Usually the chocolates are sold by weight, but for Valentine’s Day, the special offers start at 69 yuan, or just under 10 US dollars, for as many chocolates as you can fit into different-sized boxes.

It is difficult to even find a space at the table outside this shop, and almost all the customers are women.

According to the news from the Office of Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau , 12 peoples of the CCTV new site are arrested in connection with the fire that damaged Beijing’s hypermodern State television and hotel complex.

The 12 peoples include three work staff from CCTV and 8 people from the fireworks company. After the fire of CCTV, the 8 people from the firework get away from Beijing. And they are arrested by the police in Langfang Hebei province.

Preliminary investigation revealed that the firework company have the qualification of setting off fireworks of class A. But the activity has not approved from the related departments.

China Central Television (CCTV) itself was responsible for Monday night’s massive fire that caused one death and seven injuries in its new headquarters complex in eastern Beijing, the city’s fire control authorities said Tuesday.

CCTV hired staff from a fireworks company to ignite several hundred large festive firecrackers in an open space outside one of its nearly-completed buildings, said Luo Yuan, spokesman and deputy chief of Beijing Fire Control Bureau.

The 30-storey building, about 200 meters from the iconic CCTV tower,houses the luxury Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a television studio and an electronic data processing center.

The people who ignited the fireworks are being questioned by police, Luo said at a press conference late Tuesday morning. He said the fireworks company was based in the central province of Hunan, but did not give details.

He said the fireworks they set off were much more powerful and explosive than what was available at roadside stalls during the Spring Festival and therefore needed approval from the municipal government before being allowed in the downtown areas.

Policemen on patrol interfered when the explosives were set off, but CCTV ignored their warnings, said Luo. “We have videos of the scene and remnants of the fireworks, which will serve as strong evidence in the investigation.”

CCTV’s four camcorders recorded the fireworks display and the entire ignition process, he said.

A man, who claimed to be former employee of Beijing Urban Construction Group, said he saw people on watch on top of CCTV’s main tower with a hose when the firecrackers were set off.

“But I didn’t see any on guard on top of the building that caught fire,” he told Xinhua reporters at the fire site Monday night.

Beijing Urban Construction Group is prime contractor for the building that caught fire, while the iconic main tower, which many locals jokingly called “the giant shorts”, was contracted to another company.

Both buildings were designed by the Rotterdam-based OMA. Total investment is about 5 billion yuan (714 million US dollars).

The fire broke out at 8:27 p.m. Monday and was put out at 2 a.m.

Xinhua reporters saw about 80 percent of the building had been charred by Tuesday morning. No sign of damage was seen on the CCTV main tower. It is not immediately known whether the fire would postpone the official inauguration of the new CCTV tower, originally slated for October.

About 600 firemen worked to put out the fire. One of them, Zhang Jianyong from the northeastern Liaoning Province, died from respiratory tract injuries at hospital early Tuesday. He was to celebrate his 30th birthday in two weeks.

Beijing Fire Control Bureau said seven others were injured, including six firemen and one construction worker.

It has not rained in Beijing since October 26, a period of 100 days, making this the longest drought on record since 1971. The meteorological department says the dry weather will continue through early February but in the second half of the month the capital may see 4 or 5 millimeters of snow.

 Farms hit hard by drought

The drought has seriously affected the growth of winter wheat in areas round the capital. In the worst hit areas the fields are cracked and dry and the wheat has withered. The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) says the drought is the worst for many years in terms of duration and the area affected.

 Causes of the dry weather

 Since last December four cold fronts have swept Beijing bringing freezing temperatures and strong winds, but no snow. The long dry spell has been caused by the dominant flow of cold air from the northwest, say experts.

 Zong Zhiping, chief weatherman of CMA, said the lack of rainfall was the result of abnormal atmospheric conditions preventing water vapor reaching China from the Bay of Bengal. The weather in almost all regions of China, apart from the northeast, has been dominated by cold, dry air from the northwest.

 Risk of colds and flu

 Dry weather is associated with viral influenza. Hospitals report that a large proportion of recently admitted patients are suffering from respiratory disease.

 Experts say when the dry weather turns warm there may be a mass outbreak of influenza, bronchitis and other respiratory diseases. Doctors advise people to drink plenty of water, open the windows and doors to let in fresh air. The elderly should as far as possible avoid crowds and public places and those suffering from flu should take time off work to avoid infecting others.

 Public parks not affected

 Staff in Beijing’s public parks and gardens say the water shortage has not caused severe problems, but the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry and Beijing Park Management Center told the media that the spring plant irrigation will probably be carried out earlier than in previous years.

 Plants are given large amounts of water in November each year. During the winter, the land freezes and plants turn dormant, so their growth is not affected by the dry winter weather.

 Management at Beihai Park and the Summer Palace said that the soil is still frozen and so long as enough water is provided when the thaw comes plant growth will not be affected. If the temperature continues to rise, they will irrigate the plants ahead of schedule. “Usually we start the spring irrigation in early March. But we might irrigate the plants earlier this year.”

Beijing has no plans to impose vehicle emission fees in 2009, Du Shaozhong, deputy-director of the city’s environmental protection bureau said on Sunday.

Du made the announcement in response to rumors from local media about possible fees on vehicle emissions.

He said that the Ministry of Environmental Protection had been levying fees for the discharge of water, air and noise pollution, but it had yet to issue a policy on vehicle emissions.

The Beijing Times ran a story on Saturday declaring that Beijing would soon start levying vehicle discharge fees.

“We usually follow the state policies on pollutant discharge fees,” said Du. “Beijing had suggested tightening the management on vehicle tail gas after the Beijing Olympics. But relevant state departments are still doing research on the policy.”

He said the city has made many efforts to reduce the air pollution caused by vehicles. Among a series of actions, 576 yellow-tagged cars, which refer to vehicles with a higher volume of pollutant discharge than the state standard for urban area, were removed from Beijing before the Spring Festival.

Starting Jan. 1, all the vehicles with yellow tags — except for those, such as garbage and cargo trucks — will not be allowed within the Fifth Ring Road. After Oct. 1, they won’t be permitted within the Sixth Ring Road, Du said.

“We should approach all forms of fee collection with care because the government has always been trying to abolish redundant fees which burden the people,” a commentary in the Beijing Youth Daily said Sunday.

The emissions fee could well be covered by fuel taxes, since the consumption of fuel usually decides how much pollutant a vehicle will discharge, according to the commentary.

Environmental departments have carried out pilot programs on vehicle emission fees in some cities. In 1998, eastern Hangzhou City, central Zhengzhou City and northeastern Jilin City began to collect such fees, with 300 yuan (about 44 U.S. dollars) a year for small-sized cars, and 500 yuan for middle-sized vehicles. However, the fee was canceled in June 2003.

Beijing saw 24 official “blue sky” days, or days with fairly good air quality, in January, which city authorities have hailed as a sign that years of anti-pollution efforts are paying off.

 The number of blue sky days was two more than January last year, and a 10-year high, said the Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection.

 Meanwhile, major pollution indices, including concentrations of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter in the air, continued to drop markedly, said the bureau.

 The number of blue sky days rose to 274 last year from 100 in 1998, when the capital launched the blue sky drive.

Archaeologists are uncovering the details of city life as it was 2,000 years ago in the ancient Chinese capital of Chang’an.

As the capital of the Western Han Dynasty (202 BC to 8 AD), Chang’an was a metropolis with an area of 36 square kilometers, about four times the size of the contemporary Rome. Its ruins lay in the suburb of today’s Xi’an, capital of northwestern Shaanxi Province.

“After about five decades of work, we can map out the city’s clear layout now, but we still know little about how its 240,000 residents lived,” said Liu Zhendong, the head of an excavation team from the Institute of Archaeology under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), in an interview with Xinhua.

The 12-gate, walled city had eight avenues, each of which were 45 to 55 meters wide and lined with trees.

Its wall was 12 meters high, 25,700 meters long and surrounded by an eight-meter-wide moat. To run around it would be equal to take running half marathon.

“Archaeologists have excavated several major palaces and city gates but have not discovered the residences of ordinary people,” Liu said. “Did they live in courtyards like those in old Beijing? We do not know.”

The city was divided into 11 neighborhoods. Those of royal families and nobles were in the city’s southern part while shops, workshops and houses of common people were situated in the northeast.

Liu and his colleagues have been working in that area for months.

“Some construction material was unearthed, such as stone slabs with inscriptions of names of locations, or their owners,” he said. “This area will be our focus in the coming years.”

Meanwhile, the archaeologists will work on the later relics that laid upon the Western Han ruins as Chang’an remained the capital of several later kingdoms.

“We believed that the palace area of later kingdoms were in this area,” he said. The team has just excavated a palace gateway in December and unearthed well-preserved palace walls and stone bases of pillars.

After four centuries of rule by the Han Dynasty (Western and Eastern Han Dynasties), China was divided into several small kingdoms between 220 AD and 581 AD.

Some of those kingdoms, with the capital in Chang’an, were founded by nomadic ethnic groups from the north, later known as the Mongols.

“The palace gateway was an interesting finding. We hardly knew about the buildings of these kingdoms and it would help,” he said.

“Like the ancient site of Pompeii, the study of large-scale ruins requires about 100 or 200 years of excavation,” said Liu Qingzhu, a veteran archaeologist from the same institute as Liu Zhendong.

Archaeologists have just excavated about 0.1 percent of the total area of Chang’an ruins.

“Sometimes I feel like competing with time. Because irreversible damage occurred to the relics because of natural and man-made reasons,” Liu Zhendong said.