March 2007 China News

BEIJING, China (AP) -- Asians flocked to temples, parks and Disneyland on Sunday to pray, play, eat, and celebrate the first day of the Lunar New Year, ushering in the Year of the Pig.

At Beijing's Lama and White Cloud temples, faithful burned incense and tossed coins at incense burners in the hope one would land in the pot and bring them good luck for the year ahead.

At a traditional fair in Beijing's Ditan Park, performers sang folk songs and snippets of Peking opera for throngs of people snaking through the park, many carrying balloons and pinwheels. Vendors sold pork dumplings and other treats, such as freshly made caramel candy sculpted into chubby pig shapes.

The pig is one of 12 animals (or mythical animals, in the case of the dragon) on the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac, which follows the lunar calendar.

According to Chinese astrology, people born in pig years are polite, honest, hardworking and loyal. They are also supposed to be lucky, which is why many Chinese like to have babies in a pig year.

Across China, revelers ushered in the New Year Saturday night and early Sunday morning with firecrackers and fireworks -- an ancient New Year tradition meant to drive away bad luck and scare off evil spirits.

In Beijing, the streets were littered with tattered red paper and the cardboard casings from spent fireworks.

At least 125 people were reported injured by fireworks in Beijing, including one person who lost their eyes, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Chinese leaders visit remote villages

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao made separate visits to remote villages in poorer areas, chatting and cooking with locals in far western Gansu and northern Liaoning provinces.

Such trips have become an annual ritual for the leadership -- part of efforts to show that the government cares about those living in the countryside, where incomes average only US$400 (euro308) a year.

Hu fried dough twists with farmers on the outskirts of Gansu's Dingxi city, helped cut traditional door decorations from red paper and received a basket of potatoes from a poor farmer, state media said.

China's booming economic growth in the last several decades has pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty, but a growing wealth gap in recent years has exposed cracks that Hu and his government have acknowledged threaten social stability.

In Hong Kong, the normally bustling streets were virtually empty as families gathered for feasts of chicken and hot pots piled high with pork, shrimp and vegetables. People crowded into temples where the air was thick with clouds of eye-stinging incense.

Mickey and Minnie get in the spirit

At Hong Kong Disneyland, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse shed their usual Western clothes and wore traditional Chinese clothing. Mickey wore a red beanie with a matching silk shirt trimmed in gold. Minnie showed off a bright red cheongsam -- tight-fitting Chinese dress.

Instead of the usual Disney movie tunes, speakers in the park played classical Chinese music. There was also a loud clattering of cymbals and drums as a traditional dragon dance wound its way around the park.

In Taiwan, firecrackers exploded late Saturday and early Sunday to usher in the New Year.

Worshippers gathered at temples all around the island, holding incense sticks and bowing in the direction of Buddhist and Taoist deities in an effort to secure good luck throughout the coming year.

Politicians pray with their mothers

President Chen Shui-bian handed out traditional red envelopes to well wishers in his home village of Hsi Chuang and prayed in a local temple with his mother.

Ma Ying-jeou, who recently declared his candidacy for the 2008 presidential elections for the opposition Nationalist party, performed the same ritual in Taipei, as supporters greeted him with cries of "Welcome President Ma."

In South Korea, major highways were congested as millions of Koreans began the journey home after visiting their hometowns for the New Year.

More than 340,000 cars were expected to enter the capital, Seoul, from other parts of the country, 6 percent more than the average volume on a weekend day, according to Korea Highway Corp.

The Lunar New Year is also celebrated in North Korea, where school children put on a performance of "folk games, dances and songs full of optimism and enthusiasm," and expressed hope the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, would enjoy a day of rest, the North's official Korean Central News Agency reported.

ZAVENTEM, Belgium (AP) -- Thirteen dots looked just right to designer Ronane Hoet.

Together they had the perfect balance to form a stylized "b" for the new Belgian carrier Brussels Airlines and the number also matched the airline's destinations in Africa, a key market. "It was harmony," she said, wistfully.

This week, however, Brussels Airlines was busy changing the 13-ball logo on the tail and sides of one of its Airbus jets and adding a 14th one in response to complaints from superstitious customers in the United States and Italy.

The airline, the successor to the merged SN Brussels and Virgin Express, won't start flying until March 25 and the company had only painted one of its planes with the new logo, which had prompted a flood of disapproving e-mails and calls when it had been unveiled last year.

"They said they were not pleased with an aircraft with a logo with 13 balls because they think it brings them bad luck," said Brussels Airlines spokesman Geert Sciot.

'Was it that bad?'

"We are never surprised by reactions -- but that it was that bad? It really took us aback," said Hoet.

But superstition remains firmly ensconced in modern society and affects behavior in all walks of life.

Try looking for a 13th floor in some buildings, or a 13th row on some planes. On the stock exchange, some amateur traders pick shares based on lucky number combinations.

"There are many examples in business where people make decisions based on intuitive reasoning which are in fact woefully incorrect, in fact very irrational," said psychology professor Bruce Hood of Bristol University.

Tammy Karplus of Portland, Oregon, said she understood Brussels Airlines' decision as she prepared to board a Geneva-bound Lufthansa flight at Germany's Frankfurt-Main airport.

"Why make a decision which flies in the face of what everyone else perceives to be real forces," he said. "Why buck the trend?"

In China, though, 14 is bad luck

Brussels Airlines had the choice to go to 12 dots or 14. It chose 14 because of the religious connotations of the 12 disciples.

Luckily, Brussels Airlines is not flying to China, where 14 is a definite no-no. Fourteen, or one-four, in Mandarin, sounds like the phrase "to want to die."

Although such superstitions were derided in China for decades under more doctrinaire Communist rule, they have made a comeback under free-market change. Some hotels in China do not have fourteenth floors, just as some in the West eliminate the 13th floor.

"The Chinese are notoriously superstitious. Certain numbers are very lucky and their business decisions are very much shaped by their cultural superstitions," Hood said.

Karplus felt pretty relaxed about flying when the gates opened for her flight to Geneva. Then she noticed the flight number "LH3666" -- and the last three digits gave her reason for pause.

One hour and five minutes later, she safely touched down at Geneva Cointrin airport.

Rural banking takes root in China to stimulate jobs

ZHUOZHOU, China (Reuters) -- Zhang Yulong and his brothers thought they'd be rolling in cash, if they'd been able to borrow from a bank to finance a string of business ideas.

Instead, the farmers-turned-entrepreneurs leant on family and friends to build a business that used to specialize in stationery and now sells burial robes and paper offerings for the afterlife.

In Zhuozhou, a county town a couple of hours' drive southwest of Beijing, few manage to borrow from local banks, which prefer to lend to state firms or well-connected clients.

Turning to unlicensed lenders would have meant paying far higher interest rates than Zhang, 56, could stomach.

"We've missed out because we had few places to go for funds. If we'd been able to borrow from a bank, we could have struck gold by now," he said.

Similar complaints are heard across rural China, a loose phrase that encompasses dirt-poor villages and townships as large as mid-sized European cities. The collection of towns and villages that make up Zhuozhou, little more than parched farmland a decade ago, has a population of more than half a million.

China has long struggled to channel lending to rural China, from which mainstream banks have largely retreated.

But now that the big city-oriented state banks have been more or less nursed back to health, the ruling Communist Party is switching gears and backing an array of initiatives to build a system of rural finance that can stimulate jobs and growth.

The role of financial institutions in building a "new socialist countryside," with the aim of narrowing an alarming income gap between town and country, will feature prominently during next month's annual session of parliament.

There is much to do: rural China is home to less than one sixth of all bank branches, which accounted for 15 percent of the nation's combined deposits and loans as of late 2006.

Cities get 10 times more loans per head than the countryside, where more than 60 percent of China's 1.3 billion people live.

In Zhuozhou, the appetite for loans is evident. Liu Boxin, a peasant, says he'd gladly add to his sole pig and three grubby goats if only he could raise the funds.

Landmark changes

To address the issue, the government has begun to overhaul Agricultural Bank of China, one of the country's biggest commercial lenders, and is setting up a new postal bank with a remit to lend principally to farmers and rural enterprises.

Beijing will also do more to revamp debt-laden rural credit cooperatives, now the brittle backbone of rural finance.

But the biggest difference to people like Zhang could flow from policies unveiled in December that aim to bring into being new types of rural financial institutions.

In a pilot scheme planned in six provinces, individuals will be allowed for the first time to set up privately owned credit cooperatives and other types of financial firms.

Policymakers hope commercial banks will team up with private shareholders to set up lenders at county level or below and that farmers or small firms will band together to create new kinds of credit cooperatives.

The six provinces and regions -- Hubei, Jilin, Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Inner Mongolia -- will also experiment with new lending companies under a relaxed regulatory framework.

"These measures will bring enormous change to China's financial landscape by allowing masses of small institutions to emerge," said Yuan Dejun, an economist with Galaxy Securities who advises the banking regulator on rural finance.

Untapped economy

While some analysts think profits won't come easy, others see money to be made if loans are priced right and risks are prudently controlled.

"You can also be profitable operating in rural areas," said Wang Jun, a financial sector specialist with the World Bank, who warns of the blurred definitions of "rural" in China.

While the trials could bring newcomers into the market, other steps are needed to galvanize lending to rural areas.

To really arouse the interest of commercial banks and private investors, China may need to free up interest rates for rural lending and build up a credit bureau, experts say.

It may also need to enforce penalties on defaulters and promote agricultural insurance schemes that can protect lenders in the case of natural disasters.

"More incentives have to be introduced, including favorable tax rates and fiscal subsidies in the form of interest discounts," said Song Hongyuan, an expert on the rural economy with a think-tank under the agriculture ministry.

Dai Hui, who heads Dutch lender Rabobank's Beijing office, thinks it will take time for changes to take root.

"I don't expect that things will be completely changed within a very short period of time as the sustainability of a financial institution can only be assessed over the long term," she said.

The peasants-turned-businessmen of Zhuozhou are skeptical.

"Of course we'd like more access to funds, but we don't really believe that can happen," said Zhang's brother, Yukun.

China's rich spend big to celebrate Valentine's Day

SHANGHAI, China (Reuters) -- Once considered a symbol of the decadent West, Valentine's Day is becoming big business in newly affluent China.

Nowhere more so than in Shanghai, China's showcase city for the economic reforms of the last three decades, a financial hub which is once more rediscovering its glory pre-World War II days when it was known as the Paris of the East.

This Valentine's Day, Shanghai banker Richard Fan will be buying his wife a 40,000 yuan ($5,146) Cartier wrist watch.

"I think it's a better gift than some 10,000 or 20,000 yuan ($1,300-$2,600) meal," said Fan, 37.

"A gift you can use daily looks much more concrete," he added blithely.

The watch's price tag is 12 times more than the average Chinese farmer earns in a year.

Among Valentine's Day gift ideas on offer in Shanghai is a $1,000 wine-and-dine package that includes limousine transfers, personal butlers and candle-lit dinners at private concerts.

"People who earn more in Shanghai require something different for their special days," said Joan Pan, a manager at the JW Marriott Hotel, situated on the city's fashionable Nanjing Road, home to outlets of Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Chanel.

This year for Valentine's Day, the hotel is offering a 28,888 yuan ($3,700) package, including an overnight stay in either its Chairman's Suite or the Presidential Suite.

Expensive? Not nearly as much as one hotel which last year offered a Valentine package for a staggering 188,888 yuan ($24,000). The night included a romantic cruise on a luxury yacht along the waters of the Huangpu River.

Even some in the industry were shocked by that extravagance.

"It attracted attention for sure, but I'm not sure it gave people a positive impression," said one Shanghai-based hotel manager, who declined to be identified.

Street cleaner, Xiao Hu, earns about 800 yuan ($103) a month, a sum barely enough to cover the cost of a Valentine's Day dinner at an exclusive Shanghai restaurant.

She, like a majority of Chinese left behind by the economic boom that has brought wealth to a lucky few, is too busy struggling to make ends meet to celebrate a Western love festival.

"The Valentine's Day thing has little to do with me. I'm only concerned that if there are crowds of people they will strew the street with cigarette butts, paper cups and other rubbish," said the 28-year-old.

For many Shanghainese, the most romantic part of the city is the historic Bund waterfront and its art deco buildings.

A $2,580 dinner for two?

Today, the Bund is home to some of the city's most upmarket restaurants and bars, including the prestigious Cupola, a small bell tower with commanding views of the river and waterfront and a private dining room for two.

This Valentine's Day, couples are bidding for the chance to enjoy a romantic, candlelight dinner in the private room.

Starting bids open at 5,000 yuan ($645), but the Cupola's management expects the highest bid to surpass 20,000 yuan ($2,580). The proceeds will go to charity.

So far about 20 couples have signed up to bid.

"For some couples, I believe they would feel they got good value for whatever money they spent," said manager Alan Hepburn.

With restaurants and hotels still not fully booked for the holiday, some wealthy Chinese appear to be saving their yuan for the Spring Festival, the most important holiday in the Chinese calendar, which begins four days after Valentine's Day.

Despite the growing popularity of Valentine's Day in China, some Chinese observe their own traditional love festival on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.

Falling on August 19 this year, Qi Xi is based on a Chinese legend about two lovers -- a cow herder and a fairy -- who fell in love but were separated by a jealous god who created the Milky Way to keep them apart.

Only on Qi Xi could the lovers cross the stars to be together for one night.