Cute Little Girls In Hong Kong
By James Palmer
28 April 2003
Independent (UK)
Amid the sound of buzz saws and hammers, a honeycomb of one-storey bedrooms to house 1,000 people has sprung up almost overnight in a field in a northern suburb of Beijing.
The white, sterile rooms will soon become an enormous camp where the city's victims of Sars will be shut away.
Hundreds of construction workers are assembling plastic and metal panels around the clock in the latest attempt to contain the virus that has killed 131 people in mainland China, including 56 in Beijing.
The city's night clubs, karaoke bars, cinemas and internet cafes have also been forced to close as health officials announced nine new deaths from the flu-like virus, eight of them in the capital.
The temporary closure of "all entertainment businesses involving mass public gatherings" was among a raft of measures brought in to try to halt the spread of the virus in the city where there have ben 1,114 cases reported. Last week, Beijing closed primary and middle schools, sending home 1.7 million pupils. Several universities have cancelled classes.
Fines for spitting – originally introduced to try to improve the city's image in advance of the 2008 Olympics, but now believed to be essential – were raised by 1,000 per cent, to 50 yuan (£3.80).
Beijing, at first severely criticised for its response to the spread of Sars, is now taking drastic measures to isolate it. Three hospitals in the city have been sealed off. One quarantined patient was yesterday captured on TV cameras trying to escape out of an upper storey window before being dragged back by hospital staff.
The Health Ministry issued an "urgent notice" to hospitals yesterday to take the Sars threat more seriously. "The notice demands that all hospitals draw on the experience and lessons learned by Guangdong, Beijing and other areas in fighting Sars," the official Xinhua news agency said.
And in an unexplained move, the registration of marriages between foreigners and Chinese were suspended. The city government's Civil Affairs Department did not say how the measure was expected to help control Sars.
Public libraries were closed and the city's churches were told not to hold mass for congregations larger than 50.
The parks that occupy every compass point of the city remained open, as did restaurants, shopping centres, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City – the sprawling former home of China's emperors and a major tourist attraction. But they were mostly empty because of a ban on Chinese tour groups travelling outside their home provinces.
But one section of the entertainment industry reported an upturn in business. The many DVD and VCD shops around the city are doing a roaring trade as Beijing's hoards plan yet another night in front of the TV.
This may their modus operandi for some time yet, as the week-long May bank holiday has been cancelled, preventing tens of millions of Chinese from travelling around the country.
The government is worried that the virus could have already been carried into rural China with the apparent exodus – conjuring a nightmare scenario of mass contagion.
A new Health Minister, Vice Premier Wu Yi, was installed on Saturday, and Beijing's mayor was replaced last week.
Cute Little Girls In Hong Kong