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Brewing resentment

A Starbucks outlet in Beijing's 587-year-old Forbidden City has been the subject of controversy lately. When the American chain opened the modest café in 2000, critics questioned its presence within the former imperial palace. In response the company removed its trademark green-and-white signage, but continued offering lattes to the 1.6m foreigners and 5m Chinese who visit the Forbidden City each year. All seemed fine until Rui Chenggang, a prominent television anchorman, reignited the debate in January. The shop, Mr Rui said on a blog, "tramples on Chinese culture", "undermines the Forbidden City's solemnity" and constitutes "an insult to Chinese civilisation". His post (Chinese original/translation) was widely read and earned thousands of approving comments from fellow web-savvy citizens. Many chimed in with complaints of cultural imperialism and demands that Starbucks be replaced with a more traditional tea shop.

A spokesman for the Forbidden City said a new plan for all the site's retail outlets would be announced by June. A Starbucks executive told the Beijing News that the company respects China's culture and has no plans to close the café before its lease expires (although neither side has revealed when this is).

For a good time, click here

Police infiltrated a sophisticated online prostitution ring in January, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. They arrested 63 internet technicians, 38 prostitutes, 45 of their clients, five "gang leaders" and a medical worker who provided condoms and treatment for venereal diseases. The youngest of the accused prostitutes was 15 years old.

In the month before their arrest, the prostitution ring allegedly sent 7m solicitations to users of online chat rooms and instant-messaging services. Some messages were purportedly from young female college students, while others directed recipients to websites containing pictures of nude women and prostitutes' phone numbers. Prostitution is illegal in China, but away from cyberspace, it remains rampant in Beijing, where many brothels are thinly disguised as beauty salons and massage parlours.

Nightlife

Chaoyang Theatre offers an excellent introduction to Chinese acrobatics, a form of entertainment dating back 2,000 years...

Countryside careers

City officials have announced plans to send 6,000 university graduates to work in Beijing's outlying rural areas. The programme is aimed at both easing a longstanding job crunch among graduates and bolstering the central government's campaign to build a "new socialist countryside". The campaign was launched in 2005 by Hu Jintao, China's president, with an agenda of boosting agricultural output, raising living standards and improving public administration among China's 900m rural dwellers.

The Beijing Municipal Personnel Bureau said half the graduates would work as junior officials assisting village leaders, and half as teachers, medical workers or volunteers. China's education ministry expects that 30% of this year's 5m university graduates will fail to find jobs. In Beijing, the graduating class of 2007—weighing in at a record-setting 200,000—will compete for just 87,000 available jobs.

Toilet brush-up

As part of its preparations to host the 2008 Olympic games, Beijing is promising to improve the condition of its notoriously dirty public toilets. In January officials announced plans to build 1,000 toilets of "modern standard" in 2007. They will also disinfect and deodorise existing ones.

Xinhua quoted Lu Haijun, the director of Beijing's City Planning Bureau, saying all toilets should be clean, water-efficient and well ventilated. More than 5,580 public toilets had reached that standard by the end of 2006, he said. But the city has yet to reach its goal of a clean toilet within a five-minute walk of any point in the city. To help with the campaign, the city has reportedly asked 3,000 commercial buildings to make their toilets available for public use.

Catch if you can
February 2007

The Great Civilisations

Until October 1st 2008

With Beijing poised to enter the spotlight during the Olympic Games in 2008, the China Millennium World Art Museum is doing its best to establish itself as a leading cultural institution. The museum is vying to be China's first (and largest) space devoted to displaying ancient and modern art from around the world. This autumn it opened a sweeping exhibition of art objects from six early civilisations: Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, India, Rome and Maya.

The show affords a rare opportunity to pour over treasures from vastly different societies. See a vase used during ancient Olympic ceremonies, a statue of an Egyptian sphinx, a relief from the Assyrian palace in Nimrud and a Gandhara sculpture of Buddha, a perfect blend of Hellenic art with the Buddhist spirit. The exhibition features items on loan from around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Turin Museum and the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

China Millennium World Art Museum, A9, Fuxing Rd, Hai Dian District. Open: daily 9am-5.30pm. Entry: 30 yuan. Tel: +86 (0)10 6852 7108. See the museum's website (in Chinese).