The Beijing News
January 4, 2008

The second headline in The Beijing News reports on a large fire that took place Wednesday night in Urumqi, Xinjiang. The fire blazed for 22 hours, and three firefighters lost their lives in effort to combat it.

The news has attracted considerable attention online. On the Tianya BBS, netizens showed their respect for the dead firefighters, while at the same time mocking the government by twisting a famous quote from another fire: "Let the officials die first!" In the earlier fire, which took place in Karamay on December 8, 1994, the line "Let officials go first!" resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people, including 288 children. None of the officials present died (and the story was gagged by CCTV, as revealed by the station manager recently).

The top headline concerns regulations on property service that clarify the bottom line for property management companies: someone must be sent out immediately after utility problems are called in, household garbage must be cleaned every day, and unattended elevators must run in all day.

The front page picture shows the scene after a water heater exploded at an apartment in Beijing's Yuejiyuan neighborhood. All property in the house was damaged, and windows and doors were blown away. Fortunately, only one person was slightly injured in this accident.

Other headlines:

• Lost in Beijing was banned from theaters. SARFT claimed that the movie producer had released uncensored sexual content onto Internet without authorization. For more information, see this post.
• According to data from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, income of China's urban citizens grew faster than the GDP last year, rising 13%.