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Shanghai is planning to open areas of suburban woodland to the public next year, officials said yesterday. The greenery authorities will install facilities in forests and arrange a management team to supervise them.

The woodland includes ecological forest, protected forest and orchards. Jinshan and Songjiang districts have the richest forest resources, said the Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau.

The bureau will issue more details, such as how much entrance to the forests wi…

Shanghai might organize local residents to provide homestays during the 2010 World Expo, a tourism official said Tuesday.

New regulations allow tourism bureaus to work with township, government and urban communities to offer homestays during important holidays, sports events and exhibitions, said Dao Shuming, head of the Shanghai Tourism Bureau.

Shanghai had 6.4 million overseas visitors last year, and the tourism industry was valued at 206 billion yuan (about 30 billion U.S. dollars).
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The Shanghai World Expo organizers say they have built most of the mobile phone stations needed to support handset TV services featuring 2010 World Expo content in the city.

The Expo organizers have decided to set up handset TV channels to broadcast the event when it starts in May.

At the weekend the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, sent 1,000 hand-held televisions to the Expo organizers to support its pioneering move using the new technology.

The Expo organizers plan…

TO cope with the demand for facilities during the 2010 World Expo, 49 sets of mobile toilets are to be made available, the Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau said yesterday.

The mobile toilets will provide 360 cubicles for the public. They are high-tech facilities using solar energy for lighting and advanced ecological processing technologies, officials said.

The toilets have operated well on trials at recent big events like the Formula One Grand Prix in April, said Liu Weiguan…

VISITORS to the Shanghai World Expo may be able to take part in Shanghai’s traditional longtang games, including hoop-rolling, shuttlecock kicking - in which players use their feet to keep a shuttlecock in the air - marbles and rubber-band skipping, which were popular in the city decades ago.

The folk games can help Expo visitors understand Shanghai, Zhu Yonglei, deputy director general of the Bureau of Shanghai World Expo Coordination, told a public forum yesterday.

The third Expo distric…

It has been a long-standing tradition for people living near the mouth of the Qiantang River to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival by watching the tidal bore*, which they enjoy from a safe distance while enjoying another staple of the Mid-Autumn Festival: moon cake.** The International Qiantang River Tidal Bore Watching Festival, as it is now called, has also become a popular attraction for tourists.

Yanguan Town in Haining (aka Xiashi) County, Zheijiang Province, just north of Hangzhou Bay (a…

Co-sponsored by various state ministries and state commissions - and also by the local government of the city of Qingdao - the Qingdao International Beer Festival was launched in the year 1991, in celebration of the city’s 100th birthday. Since then, the Qingdao International Beer Festival has blossomed into a festive event that ignites the imagination of the city of Qingdao each year, and which attracts both beer lovers and beer manufacturers from near and far, including from the rest of China …

The Confucius Temple in Qufu, Shandong Province, is the venue for the annual International Confucius Culture Festival, which takes place from September 26th to October 10th. The festival is one of the largest celebrations commemorating Confucius (BCE 551-479), the renowned Chinese ideologist and educator, and the founder of the Confucian school of what today might best be termed social philosophy, as it stresses morality both at the individual level and as regards public office.
The main activi…

Chinese Language…

Harbin, the capital city of China’s northernmost province, Heilongjiang, is known as a Paradise of Ice and Snow and is famous for its dazzling outdoor winter artwork. The art of ice-and-snow sculpture made its debut in Harbin thirty years ago, thanks to the intelligence of artists and their efforts to add color to the lives of the local residents by taking advantage of the northern winter weather.
In 1985, the city of Harbin held the first International Ice and Snow Festival. The festival has b…