The Beijing News
May 5, 2008

It may not look like it from the cover, but The Beijing News got a makeover today. The paper's adding a number of new weekly features, including a weekly 8-page commentary section on Saturdays and "New Olympics" section on Mondays (see below). The book review moves to Saturdays, and for increased reading comfort, the paper's switched to a slightly larger type size.

Today's top headline announces that the central government has met with the envoys of the Dalai Lama, and reports that further meetings will be held at an appropriate time in the future.

In photographs, the top picture is naturally of the Olympic torch, this time at its departure from Sanya yesterday. That's Jackie Chan there with Pu Huifang, a local village leader. A fish pond is shown in the middle photo: a restaurant in Pinggu District lost more than 8,000 kg of fish, worth 300,000 yuan, in two of its fish ponds yesterday. Poisoning is suspected. At the bottom is a photo of Lu Hao, the former vice-mayor of Beijing who was just appointed head of the Communist Youth League.

"New Olympics" weekly insert

The first installment of the newspaper's new "New Olympics" weekly is titled "Lunch at the Bird's Nest," and features photos of landscapers taking a lunch break. The accompanying text by Fan Yao:

"We usually have cabbage and potatoes, but today's a holiday, so the food's a little better," Chang Xueliang, a migrant worker doing landscaping around the Bird's Nest on Labor Day, May 1, said between bites of steamed bun.

At 11:30 am, Mr. Wei the deliveryman came with a big bucket of food and a bamboo basket full of steamed buns. Because of the holiday, the food had improved: the usual egg-drop soup had become braised tofu. The workers set aside their worked and crowded round. Without washing their hands, they picked up two steamed buns apiece, and then filled their own lunchboxes with tofu before scattering among the trees, along the roadside, or simply beside the piles of rocks to eat their lunch.

Their wages are 50 yuan a day, and their contract with the landscaping company has just two articles: work time and wages. Reportedly, over the past four years, more than 100,000 migrant workers have participated in the construction of the Bird's Nest.

The complete report, which contains several additional photos, is titled Labor Day for the "Nest builders".