However, when it comes to Beijing traffic, back to “normal” generally means back to gridlock. And that’s precisely what the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport (BMCT) is warning residents to expect today following heavy congestion across the city yesterday.

Yesterday marked the first day back at work after the holiday, as well as the first day without vehicle restrictions. And as one might expect, traffic was insane.  The BMCT predicted that yesterday’s congestion reached a 9.2 on the index, which means that the average speed on many city roads didn’t exceed 20 kph.

With today marking the first day of school for Beijing elementary and middle school students, the congestion is only expected to get worse.

This past spring, among a list of 45 cities across China, Beijing ranked as the most congested. While in July, the Beijing Transportation Research Center found Beijing’s traffic index to have worsened 32 percent as compared with the same month last year.

On average, Beijing commuters spend 32 minutes every day sitting in rush hour traffic.

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The regulation, known as the “Management of Outdoor Advertisement Boards and Signs”, says in article 12 that all outdoor LED screens including advertisements and signs should be turned off from 10:30pm to 7:30am every day. But a tour of many Guangzhou commercial areas by a reporter from the New Express Daily on the same night showed a defiant scene where LED screens continued to glow well into the night. In an ironic twist to the story, one giant LED screen in the Peace World Plaza was seen displaying messages during prohibited hours from the government regulator supposedly responsible for light pollution control.

Despite recommendations that evening lights be set at a maximum of 15 lumens, the illumination on Beijng Road, a main shopping street in Guangzhou, was recorded at more than 1,000 lumens, more than 60 times the international standard. Li Guangming, a doctor with the Guangzhou Research Institute of Environmental Protection, said that light pollution could cause health problems including stress, anxiety and even cause problems in people’s sex lives.

When the reporter brought the incidents to the department, the government dodged responsibility and passed the buck to the environmental protection department, saying, “The luminous light pollution should be handled by the environmental department, and we can only give them suggestions. The responsibility lies with them.”  When the reporter grilled the department about their assigned responsibility, the person on the other end of the phone said they knew nothing about the new rule and did not receive any notification about how to handle such cases.

It’s little surprise that government bureaucracy and poor accountability are sabotaging the regulation’s enforcement, but another hurdle for the law may be the financially-assured advertisers who spend millions on the LED ads. The LED screen on Peace World Plaza, the second biggest in Guangzhou, cost advertisers RMB 302 million ($48.3 million) to secure a six-year user license starting from 2011.

In addition, the regulation is less likely to render any fruitful results as it does not include any fines or punishments even though discussions of financial incentives started in 2010. What’s more, the regulation left out two other major sources of light pollution: neon light and message scrollers. Neither was included under the narrative of the new regulation, the report said.

It’s unknown if the seemingly doomed regulation will be introduced in other cities in Guangdong, but Zhongshan should be the next in line to at least tighten the content displayed on their LED screens. A technician mistakenly played a 20-minute long pornographic film on a giant LED screen at Fuye Square in February last year.

Home page and content page credit: gz.soufun.com

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Guangzhou is among the first cities to take action. It is upgrading security at its main train stations, shopping centers and at Baiyun Airport following the attack in Kunming which left 29 people dead and more than 140 severely injured, Yangcheng Evening News reported on March 3.

Guangzhou’s Yuexiu police department has stepped up security forces along Beijing Road, a popular shopping street in the city, and sent out fully armed police officers at the entrance of the street, the report said.

More police officers have been dispatched to Guangzhou’s main train station, in ticketing areas and along platforms. Meanwhile, the city’s airport also tightened up its security checks. Each person entering the airport must now go through strict body checks for bombs and other dangerous materials, one person surnamed Huang told the newspaper.

Densely-populated areas including Guangzhou Library, Guangzhou No. 2 Children’s Palace and Tianhe Cheng are also seeing increased security after the Kunming attack. Other cities in Guangdong including Shaoguan and Shanwei have also tightened up security checks in stations, schools and hospitals, the report added.

On Saturday, knife-wielding attackers in black rushed into a railway station in Kunming in southwest Yunnan Province and stabbed people indiscriminately. Xinjiang separatist forces were blamed for the terrorist attack, according to the government, although no group has taken responsibility. As of the writing, state news agency Xinhua has announced the attackers who survived a police onslaught have been captured.

Home page photo credit: Yangcheng Evening News

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There is an old saying there, “No flower fairs, no Spring Festival.” During the festival, streets are decorated with fragrant and beautiful fresh flowers, golden tangerines, and elegant miniature landscapes, looking like rivers of flowers in the distance. The streets and fairs in Guangzhou bustle with people shopping and florists from suburban areas setting up temporary shacks for the flower fair.

A Yuexiu District-based microblog posted yesterday a collection of photos of flower markets in Guangzhou ahead of Spring Festival in the 1950s. We may live in an excessive age, but due to its climate, Guangzhou has always been able to hold lavish flower fairs as you can see from these photos taken during the red years.

A flower fair in the centre of the city in 1954

Yonghan Road, now Beijing Road, in 1955

A street with a large number of peach vendors in 1959

A flower stall in 1959

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