the Beijinger

Aside from feasting, watching Zhang Ziyi's poor attempt at lip-syncing on TV and letting off truckloads of fireworks, Beijingers were also busy sending off text messages to friends and family on Spring Festival eve. The official numbers haven't been announced yet, but China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) was forecasting that across the country more than 17 billion Spring Festival greeting messages would be sent via mobile phone over the holiday season. In Beijing alone 600 million text messages were sent on Chuxi (Spring Festival Eve), which works out at close to 38 texts per person. This number is up from 400 million last year.

As in previous years, a contest aimed at discovery the best Spring Festival text message was held.

Officials fear this obesity epidemic could mean dire consequences for the snow people community.

The rate of obesity in Beijing’s snow people population has risen by approximately 95% in the last 5 weeks, government officials say.

Another mid-Autumn festival has come and gone, and that means boxes and boxes of unopened mooncakes – the "Chinese equivalent of the Christmas fruitcake" – in homes and offices across the city. But before you throw those salted-duck-egg-yolk stuffed-delights in the trash, consider this:

Break out the masks, folks!

According to the State Environmental Protection Administration, the brown haze that descended on our fair city hit a whopping 421 on the Air Pollution Index today. To put that in perspective, on a good day it hovers between 50-150. On a bad day, we're looking at 200 or so.

In fact, today's smog is so bad that the American Environmental Protection Agency rates it as Condition Maroon - or Hazardous. They even go so far as to advise "AQI values over 300 trigger health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected." Doctors recommend not undertaking physical exercise outside, and limiting exposure to the pollution.

Not a day to be leaving the house, if you can avoid it. And if you do, make sure you mask up!

It’s no surprise that Beijing’s population is growing, but the figures are still astounding: experts have predicted that by 2020, 20 million people will live in the capital. The Peking University report (by way of the China Daily) also reveals that come 2020, 12 percent of the population will be “considered aged,” while younger people will make up 13 percent of the city.

Meanwhile, the birthrate in the capital has been outpacing the death rate in recent years, particularly in this, the year of the Golden Pig (which, as it turns out, is actually the year of the Earthen Pig). Fifty years ago, around the founding of the PRC, the city’s population was just under 5 million.

Holiday travel in China is hectic, to say the least, especially considering how the price of hotels, and air and train tickets usually increase by 20 percent in the month or so before.

cctv.com reports that Civil aviation authorities have predicted nearly 3.5 million people will travel over the next few days, a 15 percent increase from last year; and ctrip.com recently conducted a survey that indicated Chinese travelers plan to spend on average between RMB 3,000 to 7,000 this holiday season.

To accommodate the increased air traffic, 2,000 extra domestic flights have been added, but many flights to China’s most popular holiday destinations in Yunnan, Hainan and Sichuan have been already sold out (most respondents to the same ctrip plan to spend their holiday in Sichuan’s Chengdu and nearby Jiuzhaigou).

Spring is right around the corner, and with that comes the annual spring sandstorm season. For newbies to Beijing, this means a few months of dust and dirt blowing through town like a vacuum cleaner on reverse, and when it gets bad, conditions can be downright apocalyptic.

2008 is looking especially grim, according to the Beijing Meteorological Station, which is predicting as many as 11 days of dust storms this year due to a warm winter and less rainfall in the desert areas surrounding the capital.

Xinhua reports that recent years have seen an average of 9.7 days of dust storms, though last year saw only three blow through town. But because 2007 saw 11 percent less precipitation than the average levels of previous years, spring is indeed looking like gritty.

Better dust off those facemasks now.

2, 889, 900

Number of passenger trips recorded on Beijing's subway system last Friday, Nov 16. A new record for the swamped system whose load has increased dramatically since last month when line 5 opened for business and fares were reduced to 2 kuai. As we discovered recently when trying to take a train home from the Dawang Lu station, Fridays are the busiest days. Two weeks ago during the evening peak hour the station was closed for 20 minutes due to platform overcrowding.

We have People's Daily to thank for this prize quote from a Beijing Subway official:

"Passengers should go to work earlier and come back home later than usual, so as to avoid transport peak."

34.5

Percent of the city's commuters choosing public transport. This is the first time this number has exceeded the percentage of people driving a private vehicle to work (32) since figures were first recorded in 2001

3,800,000

The number of calls received by the official Olympic hot line (952008) between 9 and 10am yesterday morning. Due to the system being swamped, ticket sales were suspended later that afternoon. Depending on who you trust more, China Daily or BOCOG , the official ticketing website recorded an average of either 200,000 submissions per second (China Daily) or minute (BOCOG) during the first hour of sales. What makes it worse is that of the 9,000 tickets that were sold between 9 and 11am, 98% were through either the website or at Bank of China branches. According to our math, that means that only about 180 tickets were sold over the hotline.

Organizers have apologized for the “technical problems” and have announced that those who managed to secure tickets will receive them and that they will have the problem solved by Nov 5. The official ticket site now looks like this.