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Only two English language plays were performed during the three-week 2005 College Theater Festival of China, but they failed to evoke most Chinese audience’s favor.

Broadway’s Joseph Graves, current art commissioner for the Institute of World Theater and Film of Beijing University, acted in the monodrama”Revel’s World of Shakespeare” here on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

His play only attracted about 20 people for either performance, no more than half of the seats.

“Language is the biggest problem for me to enjoy it,” said Zhao Yuning, a student of Tianjin Foreign Language School after the performance.”I almost understood the everyday expressions, but I had to depend on the titles screened of the ancient expressions and poem lines.”

Based on Graves’ childhood,”Revel’s World of Shakespeare” describes the friendship between the playwright and his drama teacher Revel.

A similar thing occurred in”Workout,” by another US playwright Wendy Wassertein. The seven-minute monodrama, which featured a middle-aged woman talking to herself during her workout at home was shown by a student who majors in English in University of International Business and Economics on Aug. 13 and 14.

Some audience said it was hard for them to understand the play after the first night, even though everyone got a Chinese version of script before the play began. As requested by audience, Chinese titles were screened on the second night.

“Language could challenge some Chinese audience, but many meanings can be understood through body language,” Graves said.

In fact, actors in the two plays paid more attention to their body language to try to get their performances across to the Chinese audience.

Huang Fang, who acted in”Workout,” made imitations when she expressed voting, writing and putting a gun down. Graves came continually up and down a chair, and made the simple properties’ signification always changes on the stage.

However, the two plays gave unique offerings to the audience.”Graves must have a good basic training of stage lines, and he is very good at the switch between excitement and calm. Besides, the lighting was also great. All of these made me experience the unique taste of the combination of drama and English,” Chai Jinlong, a student at the Beijing Film Academy, said after watching”Revel’s World of Shakespeare.”

“Language is not a problem at all, and the point is the performance- since pantomime can make it understood, can’t it?” he said.

It is not the first time English plays were shown at the festival. Incorporating English plays into the festival aimed to make the plays more colorful and make college students enjoy foreign plays more, said Yuan Hong, an organizer of the festival.

A total of 30 plays from 15 universities across the country were expected to be performed at the annual festival, which opened in Beijing on Aug. 6.

Shippers are expected to enjoy improved efficiency to clearance, quarantine and balancing since Tianjin International Trade and Shipping Centre was put into use yesterday.

Shippers will be able to complete all procedures on the day and in one building since nearly all relative institutions, like banks, customs and tax bureaus, have established offices in the new centre, Zhou Dehong, deputy director with local port-of-entry office, told a press conference.

“That will greatly facilitate enterprises inland in the country,” he said.

The newly established centre, which covers an area of 880,000 square metres, is so far, the largest”one-stop” shipping and trade centre in the country.

Chai Zhongda, deputy secretary- general with the local municipal government said that the new centre would feature functions of governmental services, international trade, and information collection.

Zhou expected that they would further the centre’s trade function so as to improve it into a comprehensive shipping exchange centre, like the Shanghai Shipping Exchange.

“It will take some time since we started much later than Shanghai,” he said.

“But I hope we will be able to shorten this period.”

Since the port of Tianjin links via waterways to many inland regions of China to the world, it deals with millions of goods from a number of enterprises.

After the inauguration of the centre, delegations will be sent to inland provinces so as to attract more customers.

Meanwhile the centre also created an online portal for enterprises from other areas to realize clearance and deal on the Internet.

The centre is one among the 10 projects planned for Tianjin port besides the reconstruction of a sea-route, construction container harbours and bulk cargo harbours.

The municipal government has decided to invest some 40 billion yuan(US$4.84 billion) to expand the port area to 100 square kilometres by 2010 from the current 30 square kilometres.

The port is expected to develop into an international shipping and distribution hub able to handle 300 million tons of cargoes and 10 million containers. In 2004, the port handled 220 million tons of cargoes and 3.8 million containers.

No acts of violence that threaten public safety would be tolerated, a police spokesman stressed on Tuesday after an incident in which about 200 demonstrators trying to confront police cordon line at Hung Hing Road Tuesday afternoon.

A total of five persons sustained injuries in the demonstration, including two police officers and three demonstrators. They were all sent to a hospital for medical treatment, according to a police press release on Tuesday.

All were treated and discharged later except one demonstrator.

No person was arrested in the incident. During the incident, a number of demonstrators got out from the designated public activities area, the Wan Chai North Cargo Working Area, and pushed forward a wooden article towards the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, according to a government press release.

Despite repeated warnings given by the Police, the demonstrators once and again deliberately tried to confront the police cordon and set fire on the article. The officers on site have assessed the overall situation and it is necessary to contain the situation by using the minimum degree of force.

The spokesman stressed that the timely intervention by police officers showed that the security measures in place were effective and reliable.

“We are committed to protecting the freedom of expression and will do our best to facilitate such activity provided it is conducted in a peaceful and orderly manner,” he said.

“There are other options open to the persons concerned and they do not have to resort to the manner they used to express their opinion at the expense of the safety of others,” said the spokesman, stressing that such non-peaceful manner would not be accepted by the police and the people of Hong Kong.

“Police have been exercising restraint and will continue to do so in the coming few days. We hope protesters will also exercise restraint and carry out their protest actions peacefully,” he added.

Wan Chai largely returned to peace yesterday after a night of the worst violence seen in decades.

Over 130 people including 61 police officers were injured during many hours of confrontation between police and rioting crowds demonstrating against the World Trade Organization(WTO). Police have arrested over 900 protestors.

Yesterday, Chief Executive Donald Tsang pledged to prosecute those protesters who had attacked the police and damaged public property after visiting officers guarding the WTO conference, where delegates worked around the clock for a deal to end farm subsidies and open markets to foreign competition.

South Korean farmers confronting the police in Saturday’s riots were vehemently opposed to their country’s delegates agreeing to open their domestic markets to foreign competition, fearing this would drive local farmers out of business.

“We have detained quite a few hundred people and we are going through them carefully to see if we have identified those with sufficient evidence,” Tsang said, promising those without sufficient evidence would be released.

There were reports that a senior foreign ministry official from South Korea would arrive in Hong Kong today to liaise over the fate of the Korean farmers arrested by the police. He will reportedly request Hong Kong to treat them leniently.

Tsang praised the police for acting professionally and using the minimum force to bring the situation under control, saying the number of injuries was small in relation to the size of the rioting crowds, and that this showed the police had exercised maximum tolerance.

He said many shops in Wan Chai and Causeway suffered business losses, and promised vigorous efforts would be made by tourism authorities to bring local activities back to normal. Tsang, however, ruled out compensating the shops.

Early yesterday, three men were still in hospital, including a Korean who remained in serious condition. Official figures showed at least 135 people 119 men and 16 women were injured, including 61 police.

Among those arrested include 730 men and 180 women, of whom a large numbers were Koreans. There were also demonstrators from Taiwan, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, 5,000 protestors ignored the government’s appeal for calm and pressed ahead with a rally in Victoria Park. They marched through the shopping districts in Causeway Bay and Wan Chai in the afternoon, before standing off with the police along the waterfront off the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre(HKCEC), where the conference was held.

Hundreds of Korean protestors held out on the waterfront last night, condemning the deal reached by delegates inside the HKCEC. They also demanded the police release their fellow nationals.

Buzzing streets were usually quiet yesterday. Around noon, the shutters of most shops in the area remained shut. The few which were open were prepared to shut down should the situation flare up again.

While many agreed with the police tactics to keep the use of force to the minimum even though it would lead to slower dispersal of the protesters, a member of the Korean group criticized the police for handcuffing his fellow nationals.”When our protesters resisted the handcuffs, Hong Kong police beat them,” the member said.

Senior leaders of the Chinese mainland’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) will hold a preparatory discussion to decide the schedule for an upcoming cross-Strait talks.

Zheng Lizhong, standing vice president of the ARATS, will meet Kao Kung-lian, vice chairman and secretary general of the SEF, on Dec. 10 in Fuzhou, capital of southeastern Fujian Province, which stands on the opposite side of the Strait from Taiwan.

They are going to exchange views on the agenda, topics and content of agreement for the talks between the ARATS and the SEF, which are authorized by authorities in the mainland and Taiwan to handle cross-Strait issues.

According to a preliminary agreement, ARATS President Chen Yunlin and SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung will meet later this month in the island’s Taichung, for the fourth round of talks since they resumed negotiations in June last year following a 10-year suspension.

Why spend your evenings in a classroom studying grammar and sentence structure when you can learn English simply by listening to your MP3 player?

That is the thinking behind a new program offered by a language training center in Shanghai, which is providing free podcasts of English discussions on its Website.

Some english professors in the city, however, say listening to a few foreigners speaking on the Internet or an MP3 player can’t replace classroom teaching.

Ondemand training said it is the first language training center to use podcasting to teach.

Podcasting, a term that combines the words “Ipod” and “Broadcasting,” refers to a group of technologies used to distribute audio and video files over the Internet.

People can listen to and watch podcasts online or download them to an MP3 player.

Ondemand says it is trying to raise interest in podcasting as a teaching tool, and will only begin charging money for the service after it has become more popular.

“Unlike many training centers, we don’t need many excellent teachers to meet the demands of thousands of learners,” said Ken Carroll.

Carroll is one of three native English speakers who create podcasts for OnDemand. They each create a discussion on any interesting topic everyday and post them on the center’s Website (www.suixuan.com) for anyone to download free of charge.

“Anyone with a computer, Internet connection and MP3 media device can download our free talk and listen to it at any time they want,” said Carroll.”Thousands of people can listen to a podcast published by only one excellent teacher.”

Wang haitao, headmaster of New Oriental School, a school famous for Tofel, GRE and GMAT courses, say face-to-face teaching is far superior.

“The so called innovative teaching mode is similar to long-distance education or TV education,” Wang pointed out. He said the lack of any pressure from teachers or a study schedule make it easy for students to be lazy.

Chai mingjiong, who teaches English at a local university, agrees on the importance of face-to-face teaching.

“You must practice to improve yourself, not depend on any kind of software,” Chai said.

At least 26 people were injured when a school bus hit two other buses Friday morning near the tunnel of Wan Chai in Hong Kong, according to Hong Kong police.

The accident happened when the school bus, going to Wan Chai, hit another bus while trying to evade a taxi. The bus, which was pulling into station, was pushed forward and hit another bus during the accident.

All injured have been sent to hospital and cause of the accident is under further investigation.

China’s port and shipping facilities are to be upgraded to include two major new regions, the Ministry of Communications has announced.

Five port”clusters,” rather than the existing three surrounding Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tianjin, will become the new priorities as part of a new port development plan.

The outline of the plan to revise Chinese port facilities was made by Communications Minister Li Shenglin.

The minister said the two additional port groups are located on the mainland side of the Taiwan Straits in southern Fujian; and in Hainan and southern Guangdong.

The plan is part of an effort to match the national 2006-10 social and economic development programme, Li said.

Li said China’s sea ports and their relative easy access to containers and industrial materials had been a major factor in transforming the nation’s economy.

For the residents of some ancient Chinese cities like Beijing， Nanjing and Xi’an， which are in the throes of redevelopment， memories of their past are fading rapidly.

Hutongs， or narrow alleys lined with traditional Beijing courtyard houses， and place names are being replaced by modern buildings.

Nowadays， it’s almost impossible for a Beijing local to remember that the city once boasted more than 3，679 hutongs in the 1980s， a number that has been cut down by 40 percent to give way to urban roads and skyscrapers.

As a result， old place names have been fading from maps and memories.

At an old central community of Beijing’s Xuanwu district， the walls of several rows of courtyards are etched with the Chinese character of “Chai”， meaning “to be dismantled”.

“The hutongs have been winding around here for hundreds of years， but they will disappear in weeks now，” said a sad local.

In East China’s Nanjing， once the capital of six ancient dynasties， more than 180 old places names have disappeared in the past 15 years and the number of new place names has grown at a speed of 200 per year since 2001， according to an earlier report by the People’s Daily.

Some place names have been reduced， changed and even eliminated in an arbitrary way despite the historical touches contained within them， said the paper.

In North China’s Hebei province， the name of the Wanxian county， with “wan” meaning “perfect rivers and mountains” in ancient Chinese， was changed into “Shunping (county)” in 1993， simply because some overseas businessmen said the pronunciation of “wan” in modern oral Chinese may be understood as “got finished”.

“Place names are an important part of China’s national cultural heritage，” said Liu Baoquan， head of the Place Name Research Center under the Ministry of Civil Affairs. “An old place name usually tells an unique story.”

For China， he said， every place name bears a special link with history. “With the disappearance of the old place names， there will come a day that we can’t trace our culture and history.”

For most old Chinese， old place names serve as lively records of the ups and downs of the dynasties during China’s 5，000-year-long history.

According to official statistics， China has more than 700 counties， more than 1，000 towns and more than 300 cities with a standing of more than 1，000 years as well as more than 100，000 ancient villages that even their own residents can’t tell how old they are.

“Most of them bear a name that reflects the features of a special period of the Chinese civilization，” said Liu. “They can be called ‘living fossils’ of the traditional Chinese culture.”

To combat the serious situation， the Chinese government has started a national program to prevent old place names from being scrapped at will. The program will work to find， sort out and analyze the remaining old place names on the basis of field work and thus form an assessment system to classify them according to their importance， said Liu.

“Civil affairs authorities at different levels will review the application for place name changes in more strict ways and experts’ suggestions will be taken as the key basis，” said Liu.

As part of the program， an expert group has set out a series of standards for the appraisal of “ancient cities”. By late 2005， 15 counties and cities in Hebei province had been approved as China’s first batch of cities with the title of “Thousand-Year-Old Cities”.

Foreign and privately-owned firms are playing a bigger role in China’s foreign trade, which is shifting from light industrial products to high technologies, new research shows.

Chai Haitao, head of the research institute in the Department of Foreign Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, said, “The changes show China is playing a major role in the restructuring of global industry chain as well as the transfer of manufacturing.”

Since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, product profile has undergone a great change, said Chai at the ongoing Summit Forum of China’s Top 200 Exporters-Importers.

“Both imports and exports of high and new technology products, mainly in the IT industry, are growing rapidly with the export value amounting to 30 percent of the country’s total exports in 2005,” Chai said.

Export and import products had been upgraded rapidly with exports of traditional technology products, such as small-screen colour televisions, VCD players, clocks and watches, shrinking dramatically by more than 30 percent in the recent two years, while exports of high-tech products, such as laptop computers, mobile phones, and liquid crystal display items, are rising by up to 260 percent.

China’s foreign trade growth was mainly driven by light industrial products and textiles in the 1980s and by traditional electromechanical products in the 1990s.

Trading forms were changing with processing trade volume growing rapidly to 50 percent of the total trade volume in 2005.

Official figures show the country’s processing trade increased to 404.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2003, 47.6 percent of the total trade volume, from 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in 1981, just 5.7 percent of the total.

Chai said foreign and privately-owned companies were playing a more important role in China’s foreign trade with the former accounting for 58 percent of the total trade volume and the latter 21 percent.