New traffic rules and extended services

New traffic regulations that will see up to 800,000 cars taken off Beijing’s road every working day, come efective from October 13 . All cars with license plates ending with either a 1 or 6 are not permitted to be driven within the Fifth Ring Road between 6am to 9pm on Mondays.

Monday 1 + 6 taken off road
Tuesday 2 + 7
Wednesday 3 + 8
Thursday 4 + 9
Friday 5 + 0

For the first month of implementation drivers caught taking their vehicles to the road on restricted days will get off with a verbal warning. After this initial period, those caught flaunting the ban will be fined RMB 100. However, no points will be deducted from the driver’s license.

Extended Subway Hours and more Buses
In order to support the new car restriction measures, the Beijing Subway Company has announced that they will extend the operating hours of the city’s subway lines. The city’s transport bureau will increase the number of buses on Beijing’s streets by 10% to 18,000 vehicles. The bureau has also announced that 10 of the 34 Olympic bus lines will be retained indefinitely and that these services will now operate from 6am daily. They’ve also increased the number of evening services by 3 lines so that there are now 15 lines operating overnight. They’ve also extended the operating hours of other bus lines.

Varied Office and Business Hours
The office hours of various unspecified industries and work units scattered across the city have been staggered to start at 8.30, 9 and 9.30am to help relieve peak hour traffic congestion. The office hours of national government bodies, Beijing government offices and schools remain the same.
Business hours of most of Beijing’s large department stores have been set as 10am-10pm. Most stores we’re already operating on this time frame but some department stores have been forced to push back the time they open by half and hour. The traffic bureau will announce the measures a week before the start of every month.

Let us hope that all these efforts can help bring down the polution again to the same (or lower) level as during the Olympics. Because soon the "heating-season" starts and all the powerplants in and around Beijing will start spreading their smoke over the city.

Nei Mongol - a rich part of China

Most of ShiZhitings family live in Nei Mongol and since her fathers youngest brothers son got married just before the holiday we took the oportunity to visit their hometown Wuhai.

This is a small and "quiet" town with just 450 000 people, in the middle of the coal- and metal district in Inner Mongolia.

Before this was a poor part of China but now with all the coal, minerals and metals found in the hills and mountains it is one of the richest provinces in China.
You see coalmines everywhere and I never have seen so many trucks on the road before - all loaded (overloaded) with coal. Since the load was not so well covered a lot of coaldust is coming from the trucks and the ground beside the roads is totally black of the dust.


















Before not too long this will be a great environmental problem together with all the power plants burning coal. You see the chimneys everywhere and can smell the coal. This is another example to how short time economy will destroy for the future. Nobody is today thinking about this - just quick make money and get out.....(of the country with the money...)

National Holiday

Sorry for not updating during a long time but have been quite busy.
Two weeks ago we had National Holiday in China and many people travelled across China - it is a small logistic miracle every year whel several million Chinese go by bus, train and airplane on the same days....

A lot of people from other parts of China visit Beijing during this holiday. This is the way it can look at Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City during one of the peak days.

8,2 million people visited Beijing major tourist sites during the week and later 38,75 tons rubbish was swept up from Tiananmen Square (last year 80 tons).
Also the Great Wall was crowded with people.




















In Badaling, 396 000 people climbed over each other.

According to the Beijing News, Beijing ate RMB 115 million worth of food, a 53.6% increase on last year.
Beijing parks saw almost 3 million visitors over the seven-day break. The Summer Palace (Yiheyuan) proved the most popular with 443,900 visitors. The Altar of Heavan (Tiantan) attracted 353,300, Beihai Park 229,700 and Fragrant Hills (Xiangshan) about 200,000.

So, a good advice from friends was NOT to stay in Beijing over the holiday. We did not - we went to Inner Mongolia....

Blue skies

The past weeks have been wonderful in Beijing. Not just because of the Olympics but because of the weather...
Living here for almost two years now I have never seen a weather like this before - almost every day a clear sky that is almost blue. The visibility some days was over 40 km - you could see the mountains with the Great Wall in the north being high up on a building. This August was the best month of air quality Beijing seen in many years - 14 days with "excellent" air quality and 16 "fairly good". The previous record set in 1998 was just 9 days with "excellent" air quality. Last August just had 2 days.

So, all actions take for the Olympics payed off in the end. Abandon all trucks that are heavy polluters, odd-even driving for private cars, stop all construction sites and stop all pollution from factories in and around Beijing (closed down permanent or during Olympics).

The big question is now - how will it be now when the Olympics and after that the ParaOlympics is over. Will Beijing go back to what it was before - one of the most polluted cities in the word...
We can just cross our fingers and hope not!

Typhoon!

Back in Doumen and Zhuhai (my second home) for two days meetings. Got some warning already when I arrived that there was a typhoon coming up and that it would probably strike the area during Friday.
Friday morning the typhoon warning was "yellow" - a medium strong wind with not too much impact but during the day it was increasing to "orange" - a quite strong typhoon.
So just before lunch we got order to leave Doumen and quick go back (around 1 hr) to Zhuhai and stay inside the hotel. Shuttle buses was quick arranged and the put me and Peter in a car so we quick would come back.

The maximum was estimated till around 17-18 in the evening and all people was asked to stay inside. Some of my Chinese friends was quite worried but for me it was a new experience and quite exiting....
After returning to the hotel I had to go out to find something to eat since we had no lunch. The wind was so strong so I was almost flying around in the street - feeling like the "Micheline man". The sea was not blue anymore - the water was dark brown and the waves very high - in some places pushing the water over the road and the cars driving there. And the heavy rain started - totally wet in 3 minutes.
The hotel entrance was covered with a big metal plate entrance with a small door with metal window - looked like the entrance to a prison..

In the evening the rain was very heavy and the streets "flooded" and the wind was very strong but in the morning in had calmed down and this afternoon the weather is very nice - blue sky, sun and it smells nice.

So, now I have added "typhoon" to my list of experiences.....