Shanghai Morning Post
January 26, 2009

On the first day of the new lunar year, it's time for China's newspapers to celebrate the Spring Festival with colorful front pages and New Year's greetings for their readers.

One of the most attractive of today's holiday-themed front pages is from the Shanghai Morning Post, which uses a simple paper-cut border in lieu of the splashy, graphics- and ad-heavy designs that dominated most papers.

The photo is of flight attendants preparing a flight for takeoff at Shanghai's Pudong Airport. Surrounding it are short reports on Spring Festival celebrations in a variety of other areas: the New Year in Sichuan, the New Year for people who have to work, the New Year in SMS messages, and the New Year for President Hu Jintao.

Hu, as the People's Daily notes in two front-page photos, visted retired cadres in an old revolutionary area, where he stood for a photo-op while operating a soybean grinder. Premier Wen Jiabao also took part in home-style festival activities, frying up some twice-cooked pork for the locals during a visit to the Sichuan earthquake region.

Beijing Times
January 26, 2009

Southern Metropolis Daily
January 26, 2009

Southern Metropolis Daily trumpets the two leaders' activities in front-page headlines above a photo of a family in Beichuan feasting in a curiously empty alley between two rows of temporary housing.

Today's Beijing Times, with more than half of the front page devoted to a reporter visiting China's Great Wall Station in Antarctica, gets the prize for self-promotion. The headline announces that the reporter, Tian Qianfeng, extends his New Year's wishes to readers, but he's holding a banner with the paper's nameplate instead of an appropriate couplet or greeting.