Shanghai’s Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street will set up smoking areas in 23 stores along the busy shopping strip next month as the first step to turn the street into a smoke-free zone, the Huangpu District government said yesterday, a local newspaper reported.

Shop assistants will advise smokers to go to allocated smoking zones or bathrooms after they enter stores, the Youth Daily said, citing a district official in charge of health issues.

The smoking control area will include all the stores between Xizhang Road N and Zhengjiang Road C, including Bailian Shimao Plaza and Yong’an Store.

However, shop assistants will have no powers to force smokers to stay in the smoking areas. If smokers refuse to move to the special zones assistants will have no authority to issue fines, the report said, citing the official.

The purpose was to raise social awareness of the health issues of smoking in public places, the official added.

Outdoor bars and other areas in the open will not be categorized into smoking-control areas, the report said.

The district government has invited experts to help shop assistants with implementation of the policy. Training will be finished around next month, the report added.

The Yong’an Store and the Big Echo Karaoke Bar has already adopted the policy, the report said.

The district government will extend the smoking-control area if the policy is shown to be effective after two years, the official said.

The government conducted a survey among employees of stores and entertainment venues on the street in February.

More than 70 percent of respondents said they would be willing to execute the drive in their stores while more than 90 percent said they support the government’s plan to turn the street into a “no-smoking street,” the report said.

An Air China Boeing 737 landed at Pyongyang Sunan Airport Monday, launching the company’s direct flight service from Beijing to Pyongyang, the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).     Flight CA121 will take off from Beijing at 1:40 p.m. local time (05:40 GMT) every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and arrive in Pyongyang at 4:20 p.m. (07:20 GMT).

    Flight CA122, the return flight, will leave Pyongyang at 5:20 p.m. local time (08:20 GMT) and arrive in Beijing at 6:05 p.m. (10:05 GMT).

    Up to now, the Beijing-based Air China has served as the only foreign airline to offer scheduled flights to the DPRK.

Two of the Shanghai’s old townships will be developed into countryside tourist attractions over the next few years, the city government released yesterday.

Blueprints for Huating Town and Xuhang Town in the Jiading District were publicized on the official Website of the Shanghai Urban planning Administrative Bureau yesterday.

“Both townships will become ecologically based residential and business complexes,” the draft plans revealed.

The two towns are located in the north of the district.

The heart of the Huating Town has a ground area of 6.5 square kilometers, comprising five villages.

The plan calls for the development of golf courses, resorts and farmers’ home inns over the next decade.

Farmers’ home inns are gaining popularity with visitors from the city. They allow tourists to eat with the farming family or do farm chores for fun.

At Xuhang Town, the development will focus on the town’s ancient traditional houses and canals, which will be conserved.

Jiading District is also planning to build an artificial lake as a tourist attraction.

Mail and cargo flights between the Chinese coastal city of Yantai, Shandong Province, and Seoul, South Korea, went into operation on Tuesday, shortening delivery times between the two cities by at least 12 hours.

A Boeing 737 aircraft of China Postal Airlines, specializing in express mail services (EMS) and cargo transport, took off from Yantai International Airport at 11 a.m. and landed in Seoul 70 minutes later, airline sources said.

It is the first cargo flight service between South Korea and Shandong, its largest investment destination in China. South Korea has invested about 20 billion US dollars in the eastern province through 2007, accounting for 27 percent of its China investment.

The new route boosts economic exchange between Shandong and South Korea and gives China Postal a better footing in the international market, according to the China Postal Airlines source.

Currently, there are 18,000 companies that have been directly invested by South Korean businesses in Shandong, half of the total in China.

China Postal Airlines will fly from Yantai to Seoul five times weekly, according to company sources. Express mail from the province can arrive at Seoul, Gyeonggi and Incheon in South Korea the next day and in other cities a day after that.

Shanghai-based China Postal Airlines, a 51/49 percent joint venture between China’s State Post Bureau and China Southern Airlines, boasts a fleet of 13 aircraft and operates 30 flights to a dozen domestic cities. The company’s delivery network covers more than 300 Chinese cities.

In line with its commitments to the World Trade Organization, China has fully opened its express delivery market. International delivery companies such as DHL, TNT and UPS are now competing in China.

More than 40 heritage buildings in the capital are in a state of neglect and disrepair, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday. And it’s often hard to do anything about the problem because the rules on penalties and compensation are unclear. 

The newspaper said that the city’s cultural relics department had asked the tenants of 20 heritage buildings to correct the problems within a year. 

In some cases, tenants haven’t installed proper facilities to protect the old buildings, made of wood and bricks, from fire and lightning, said Hao Dongchen, the city cultural relic department official. 

“In one heritage building, the former residence of a prince, we found about 160 gas cylinders being stored by residents. If one explodes, it will be disastrous,” Hao said. 

Several heritage buildings were not properly maintained and residents had also added new buildings on the sites, which threatened the old structures, he said. 

Among 20 newly added heritage buildings, half are occupied by central government departments, Hao said. 

The authority had denounced residents in 34 other heritage buildings in past two years but only five old buildings had been fully repaired. 

The authority can not effectively push owners and tenants to speed up repairs because of a lack of detailed regulations, said Yu Ping, deputy head of the city cultural relic department. 

“Some heritage buildings are overcrowded but without clear compensation rules, it is hard to move people out,” he said. 

The capital city has identified more than 320 heritage buildings under state and municipal protection. As of 2005, about 60 percent were inhabited or being used as offices.

“Lantern Festival, like Tomb-Sweeping Day, Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival, is one of the best-known traditional festivals in China. Since these three are public holidays, why is Lantern Festival an exception?” wrote a netizen nicknamed “Shenliu hermit” on Sina.com. “The Lantern Festival represents part of China’s cultural heritage. Making Lantern Festival an official holiday will promote the Chinese people’s awareness of its significance”, according to Shenliu hermit. Netizens also agreed that domestic consumption would be boosted if one more legal holiday was added onto the end of the Spring Festival. “The local government puts up a lot of lanterns along the streets during the festival each year. Since both the government and common people think highly of the festival, why not call it a day off?” a netizen named “Lan benben” from Changsha, the capital of southern Hunan Province, wrote on Sina.com, one of the portal websites in China.

On Sina, more than 500 netizens agreed that the day ought to be a legal holiday and were strongly critical of those who objected.

To add one more legal day to the current calendar seems to be too much since China has already had so many holidays, a netizen from east Shandong Province wrote. One more day off during festivals means more celebrations and more extravagance, he said.

His comment drew critics who said that he was being ironic or sick.

Under a government plan released at the end of last year, China is to abolish the May Day “Golden Week” but keep the other two week-long holidays — the National Holiday and the Spring Festival. The May Day holidays were distributed to traditional festivals including Tomb-Sweeping Day, Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival in a bid to help carry forward Chinese history and culture and ease the burden of “Golden Weeks”. The government introduced the “Golden Week” holidays in 1999 but found the week-long holidays caused problems such as overcrowding, poor service, a scarcity of hotel rooms and damage to scenic spots.

Last year, the government sought opinions online and decided to abandon the May Day “Golden Week”.

The Lantern Festival was then not included in the list because the date was very close to the Spring Festival, according to the official explanation.

The Lantern Festival, also called Yuan Xiao Festival, takes place under the first full moon of lunar calendar. The festival dates back to the Han Dynasty and has a history of more than 2,000 years.

There are many forms of entertainment available during the festival, such as making and exhibiting lanterns, guessing games, lion dancing and stilt-walking.

Another important part of the Lantern Festival is eating small dumpling balls called Yuanxiao or Tangyuan, which are made of glutinous rice flour, sometimes rolled around a filling of sesame, peanuts, vegetables or meat.

The festival is widely celebrated by Chinese communities around the world.