Taishan to Hold Millennium Celebrations

Tai'an City in Shandong Province is busy with preparations for Mount Tai millennium celebration activities.

Mount Tai, located in the central part of Shandong Province, is known as one of China's five sacred mountains. The Tai'an People's government has decided to hold a grand ceremony to celebrate the coming of the new millennium, with activities as follows:

Representatives of China's 56 ethnic groups will converge on Mount Tai on December 31, 1999 to welcome the first dawn of the 21st century.

At 24:00 sharp on December 31, 1999, the ancient bells in the Hongde Tower on the summit of Mount Tai and in the Dai Temple at the foot of Mount Tai will sound to signal the start of an ascent of the mountain by 10,000 people. Meanwhile, a 21-gun salute will be fired. The mountain climbers will reach the summit before the sun rises the next day.

As the sun rises around 7:15 on New Year's Day, 2000, 21 giant dragons 21 meters long each will be launched into the sky.

A ceremony to place a bronze New Century tripod in the Qingdi Palace on the summit of Mount Tai will be held at 8:00 sharp. The tripod weighs 599 kilograms, and is 169 cm high and 196 cm at the widest point of its circumference.

Participants will sign the huge New Century Declaration Book at 9:00.

Welcoming ceremony of the arrival of three Dragon Pearls from Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Fuzhou, respectively. The pearls have been designed by compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan to express their wishes for the reunification of the motherland. They will be kept on Mount Tai forever. The grand ceremony will be held in the Dai Temple at 14:00, with a 2,000-meter-long giant dragon greeting the pearls.

"New Millennium" China 2000 tour will cover Mount Tai, the Dai Temple, the marshland where the headquarters of the Ming Dynasty rebels mentioned in the classic novel Outlaws of the Marsh was located, and Qufu, the birthplace of Confucus. The tour will lasts from the afternoon of January 1 to the morning of January 3, 2000.

China Boasts 200 Amusement Parks

According to primary statistics from the China Amusement Parks Association, there are 2000 Amusement Parks throughout China, visited by about 300 million people a year.

Amusement centers in China are becoming larger and more advanced. For instance, the high-tech 21st Century Amusement Park will be built in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, and Wuhan City in Hubei Province plans spend 1.2 billion yuan to construct the Yangtze River Amusement Park. Zhuhai City in Guangdong Province plans to build the New Century Gate with a span of 300 meters, an amusement center and a sculpture park on Hengqin Island, which is very close to Macao.

Daqing to Tap Wetland

Rapid development of the petroleum industry has turned Daqing into a modern industry has turned Daqing into a modern industrial city in Heilongjiang Province. Lakes and rivers within the jurisdiction of Daqing City constitute vast stretches of marshland or wetland. The wetland covers 1.24 million hectares, about 5 percent of the national total.

A great potential is waiting to be tapped here for tourism development. The unique Wetland Ecological Tour offered by Daping combines sightseeing with visits to the Petroleum Technology Museum, the Iron-Man Exhibition Center, locations of oil-well drilling and oil extraction, and petrochemical enterprises.

The central area of the wetland is home to red-crowned cranes, swans, gray cranes, ducks, geese and sand gulls. There are vast expanses of grassland, reed marshes, natural secondary and artificial forests and farmland.

Longxin Temple Renovation Completed

Zhengding County in Hebei Province has finished repairing the Dabei Pavilion in Longxing Temple. This is the second-largest cultural relic repair project since the founding of new China in 1949, after the renovation of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Now it is open to visitors.

Zhengding County, in the central plain of Hebei Province, is 258 kilometers from Beijing. The county has five cultural relic units under state protection and seven provincial-level cultural relics units.

The bronze statue of 1,000-hand, 1,000-eye Guanyin housed in the Dabei Pavilion, 21.3 meters tall, is one of China's earliest bronze statues.

Xinjiang Opens More Ports

So far, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has opened 25 Category I and II ports to the outside world, leading all the provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China.

It has a total of 16 Category I ports, including 15 border ports, and nine Category II ports. A lot of them have been made into multi-purpose commercial ports combining checking, inspection, transportation, trade services, tourism, shopping and recreation, thereby promoting local economic development.

The volume of cargoes and passengers transported at these ports has increased sharply. In 1998, cargoes exported through the ports reached 3 million tons, and 770 million yuan in customs duty and value-added tax was levied. In the first half of this year, cargo traffic through all ports increased by 60 percent over the same period last year.

New Longingtouch Applied

The HIS Company is constantly updating its hotel management system software to make it more suitable for the Chinese market. Its new Longingtounch system for use with Windows NT is highly appreciated by hotel guests.

This system used to be only used by front desks and computer centers of hotels. Now it is widely used for financial affairs, management, handling hotel office business and for room reservations through the Internet.

In the past year since its launching, a dozen star-rated hotels have installed the system, including the Jinglun Hotel Beijing, Shanghai Rainbow Hotel, Harbor Plaza Kunming and Shenzhen Sunshine Hotel.

In addtion, HIS will also launch the "Longzhan Professional Plan," to improve technical level of hotel computer operators in operation and maintenance of the Longzhan System and related sofeware systems.