Album Highlighting China's Changing Capital

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, December 01, 2001

Album Highlighting China's Changing Capital

From the Forbidden City charming with an ancient demeanor of the glamorous Central Business District (CBD), and from those quiet "hutongs (lanes)" tothose boisterous bars that are young people's haunts - the album "Beijing, the Magnificent City" provides readers with a full glimpse of China's changing capital.

The album, which was launched in 1993, is an annual celebrationof the Chinese capital. At a reception marking the publication of the latest edition, Editor-in-Chief Zhang Ming said the album is just one of a dozen publications produced by the Beijing Foreign Cultural Exchange Center (BFCEC) to "let the world know Beijing better."

"Altogether," she said, "these publications are produced in more than two million copies a year."

Some of the publications, including the monthlies Beijing This Month and Business Beijing, are freely available at the Capital Airport, tourist hotels and high-class office mansions. So far this year 50,00 copies of Beijing Tourist Map have been picked up by travelers at the airport, Zhang Ming said.

Now that Beijing has won the 2008 Olympic Games and China has been admitted into the World Trade Organization, the Chinese capital is expecting an influx of visitors -- either for business or tour -- from outside the country. The city handled three million tourist arrivals in 2000, and is expecting 4.6 million by 2008, according to officials of the Municipal Tourist Administration.