China hopes Year of the Monkey brings prosperity

EXUBERANT explosions echoed across Beijing yesterday as Chinese people welcomed the Year of the Monkey, a time they hope brings wealth to a country that has made prosperity its official policy.

"The golden monkey presents us with fortune; our sacred provinces welcome spring," said the Beijing Youth Daily, one of the few papers that published abbreviated editions on the Lunar New Year's first morning.

The departure of millions from Beijing for the holiday left its usually traffic-choked streets quiet at rush hour. On the city's ring roads, cars moved smoothly unheard of when the sun is shining.

Even 24-hour stores were closed and traditional morning exercisers were absent from parks. The skyline's ubiquitous cranes, symbols of the frantic building boom, were still.

Fireworks resonated through the night despite a ban on such explosives that goes largely ignored and apparently, unenforced.

Shanghai, China's biggest city, uncorked an all-night fireworks barrage, with bottle rockets soaring into the sky and bundles of firecrackers detonating in buckets in the street, their containers amplifying the sound.

"It's just unbelievably loud and it goes on all night," said convenience store clerk Liu Yuhua. "No one can sleep, not even with ear plugs."

Firecrackers, a staple of Lunar New Year celebrations in China for centuries, are considered an efficient method of driving out evil spirits and a noisy way to celebrate.

Newspapers and television stations brimmed with simian iconography, from the mythical Chinese "Monkey King" to the ape from the old video game "Donkey Kong."

China Central Television, in a New Year's special, brought out monkey figures and dancers for a music-drenched celebration. Nurses who helped the country fight SARS were honoured, as was China's newest national hero, astronaut Yang Liwei.

"People all over the world have marched into a new century. Let's cherish peace and do away with wars," said Yang, who orbited the Earth in October.

"World peace should be as permanent as the sky and the earth. On this special occasion, with our love for our motherland, let's wait for the dawn of a New Year. Let's show our respect for our great nation," he said.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese have been on the move in recent days, returning to hometowns or going on holiday for what is also known as Spring Festival the largest mass migration of humans on the planet.

In Hong Kong, chief executive Tung Chee-hwa conveyed his greetings to the territory's citizens on television, radio and the internet yesterday, saying good times are back after economic faltering and last year's SARS epidemic.

"A buoyancy is evident everywhere. May this buoyant quality remain with us throughout the New Year," Tung said. "More than anything, years of hard work have laid a solid foundation for the successful economic restructuring of Hong Kong and its further development."

The Chinese government hopes the Year of the Monkey will be prosperous. Figures announced this week say China's economy grew at a rate of 9.1% in the past year, its best performance since 1996.

The government has made building a "xiaokang shehui," or well-off society, its top priority and says its development economic, financial, architectural is the goal in the New Year.