The Sixth Beijing Tourism Expo and Wangfujing Tourism and Culture Festival will be held at Wangfujing Street on April 3 and 4.

Representatives of travel agencies, local scenic spots and other domestic tourism organizations will display their products there.

Scenic pictorial displays and travel consultant seminar will be the main attractions this year.

Tel: 6559-8456

Players prepare!

Beijing will hold its 11th China Game Player Expo at Shijingshan Entertainment Park from April 4 to 6.

Various gaming machines made by both domestic and foreign companies will be the star attractions at the fair which is a carnival for children and also a magnet for fans of extreme sports.

Tel: 6882-5005

Time for tea

The Third Beijing Tea Culture and International Tea Seminar will be held at Famen Temple, which is located at the west end of downtown Beijing.

The event will last five days from April 23 to 27.

Tea performances, tea-tasting ceremony and seminars will be staged during the event.

Experts on tea from all across the world will attend the annual event.

Gorgeous geopark

The Three Gorges on the Yangtze River has become the largest geological park in China with an area of 25,000 square kilometres.

The park, added to the list of national geological parks last month, covers both banks of the main stream of the Three Gorges from Fengjie County, Chongqing Municipality, to Yichang City, Hubei Province.

The region was accepted on the list because of its rich geological phenomena.

The region boasts southern China's oldest metamorphic rock base, formed 3.2 billion years ago, the world's oldest glacier sediment dating back 700 million years, and a complete stratum layer from the Proterozoic Era.

It also has several thousand varieties of animal and plant fossils and rich phenomena recording geological disasters, and the evolution of rivers and karst.

China has 85 national geological parks.

Three Gorges cruise rises

The cost of a cruise through the Three Gorges increased 15 per cent from March 8.

Tourists taking cruises between Yichang and Chongqing will pay more thanks to the increase of oil as well as the deluxe renovation of the new ships.

First naval warfare museum built

China's first museum of naval warfare has been built at Poyang Lake's Xieshan Island, in East China's Jiangxi Province.

The museum, covering 1,300 square metres, features more than 500 weapons, including lances, spears, axes, iron forks, iron chains and artillery found in the lake by archaeologists and fishermen.

The weapons, together with Xieshan's ancient city walls, emplacements and beacon towers, were of great importance to the study ancient Chinese naval warfare, archaeologists said.

Xieshan Island was once of military significance. From the Three Kingdoms period (220 to 280) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), it witnessed about 100 battles.

Airline discounts route

China Southern Airlines (CSA), one of the three leading air carriers in China, announced that the fare for a CSA flight between Ningbo, a port city in East China's Zhejiang Province, and Shanghai, the commercial centre in China, will be available at 40 per cent discount, or 180 yuan (US$22), in March this year.

China Southern Airlines said that the low-price ticket programme will last a month.

With the spring travel season approaching, various airlines were vying for customers by offering low-price air tickets.

High-speed rail

A high-speed railway connecting Guangzhou, the provincial capital, to Zhuhai Special Economic Zone, which borders Macao, will be built by South China's Guangdong Province.

Construction of the 140-kilometre track will begin this year, according to Yang Tusheng, general manager of Guangdong Railway Group. The 20.8 billion yuan (US$2.51 billion) project will be completed by 2007.

The province and the Ministry of Railways will split the cost of construction.

Yang said his group is in talks with companies from the United States, Germany, France and Japan to import technologies and equipment for the project, which will not use the expensive magnetic-levitation option.

It will take about 40 minutes for the train journey compared with the two hours needed for a car ride on the Guangzhou-Zhuhai Expressway.

The project, which is expected to be extended to Macao in the future, will have 14 stations and link major cities and towns in the western part of the prosperous Pearl River Delta.

Trains will leave every eight minutes from each end and the journey will cost about 50 yuan US$6) ?about the same as the current bus fare.

The line will be able to handle more than 250,000 passengers a day by 2011 and 775,000 by 2033.

Fujian steps up tourism

Fujian Bureau of Tourism is to open a series of new tourist routes. The bureau will shortly unveil 12 tourist routes for travelers to the southern province.

They include a cultural tour to Fuzhou; a leisure tour to Xiamen; sightseeing in Wuyi Mountains; a pilgrimage to Putian Mazu Temple and a fitness tour to Sanming.

Insiders point out that the design of tourist routes is crucial to the development of tourism. Fujian departments of tourism of all levels will take advantage of Fujian folk customs and cultures and creatively design tourist routes to fully develop resources for people.

Rail the way to go

Beijing is to invest 4.8 billion yuan, or some US$580 million, to resolve the city's heavy traffic problems.

A local official says from this year on, the city's infrastructure construction will focus on the building of railways, including light rail and subway, and the improvement of existing roads.

He says Beijing's rail transportation will grow 40 kilometres each year and reach 300 kilometres by 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Last week the city's newly elected mayor Wang Qishan stressed the traffic problem in the city would not affect the Games

Airlines share codes

European-based global aviation giant, Deutsche Lufthansa AG (Lufthansa), revealed that it is getting closer to completing negotiations with one of its Chinese counterparts, Shanghai Airlines Co Ltd (Shanghai Airlines), for a possible code-sharing agreement and co-operation in other areas.

"Our talks with Shanghai Airlines (about possible code sharing) are in the final stage. In our eyes, Shanghai Airlines is quite an accomplished regional carrier and a good partner to work with as well,?Carsten Spohr, Lufthansa's vice-president of Strategy and Alliances, said.

Lufthansa already has a code-sharing programme with Air China on Sino-German flights. And the German flag carrier seems very keen to find more partners in China to further expand business in the promising aviation market.

It is believed that the application will soon be approved by the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC), the country's aviation watchdog.

Fever alert

China's State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has ordered strict quarantine checks of passengers, planes, ships and containers from Indonesia to prevent dengue fever entering the country.

The World Health Organization says as many as 19,000 people had contracted the disease in Indonesia by March 1, and 336 had died.

Transmitted by mosquitoes, dengue fever is characterized by headaches, rashes, cramps and severe back and muscle pains. It usually lasts about two weeks after infection and can be fatal if treatment is delayed.

The administration circular urges relevant quarantine departments to strictly check the body temperatures of any passenger from Indonesia and take necessary measures if anyone is found to have fever, headaches, rashes, muscle pains and other typical symptoms.

The circular also requires passengers from Indonesia to voluntarily report to the Chinese quarantine departments if they have dengue fever symptoms and to seek immediate medical treatment.