The greatest wish of many Chinese sports lovers is to get a ticket for the men’s 110 m hurdles final at the Beijing Olympic Games. The reason is simple: Liu Xiang is expected to defend his Olympic gold.
However, a ticket can be costly. Within an hour of the third round of domestic tickets going on sale on Monday, all tickets to the men’s 110 m hurdles event were sold out.
For the unlucky ones, a slim hope still exists online where some people want to sell their tickets for other events, but at a price.
A woman named Wang Xiao said online she wants to sell several tickets for the semifinals of the hurdles event. But wants 4,900 yuan ($700) for each ticket, more than six times the original price of 800 yuan.
Buyers will also be provided a limo pickup service from their door to the sports venue.
The woman said she has friends who are reselling their tickets at a huge profit.
“My tickets are selling very well. I have sold more than 100 tickets for different events of the Games,” she was quoted as saying by the Beijing Morning Post.
Advertisements for the sale of Olympic tickets can be easily found online. The price of tickets for some popular events such as the opening and closing ceremonies have soared to 100,000 yuan each.
Many Beijing residents said they were disappointed with the speculative reselling of tickets. It was unfair to genuine sports fans. In response, organizers of the Beijing Games said speculative reselling was a breach of the law.
According to a regulation of the Ministry of Public Security in 2006, speculation in tickets sales and other valuable coupons can lead to 10 to 15 days in detention and a fine of less than 1,000 yuan.
The tickets can be sold only once with the price no higher than the original one, officials said.
Tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies were sold to buyers with their ID number recorded, therefore it would be difficult to resell them. Those who managed to buy them would be taking a risk.
Some people who have no tickets are also advertising online to cheat buyers.
A total of 1.38 million tickets were put on sale in the third round for 16 events.
Each applicant is allowed to submit only one order for a maximum of two competitions with a limit of three tickets for each event.
“This gives everyone a fair chance,” Zhu Yan, the director of the Olympic ticketing center, said.
All tickets for events in Beijing and Hong Kong were sold out on Tuesday. Only a few tickets were available yesterday for some events in other cities such as Shanghai, Qingdao, Shenyang and Tianjin.

from: chinadaily.com.cn

Shandong province will be the first province to sell tickets for a new kind of sports lottery, the instant lottery, beginning on March 23.
The lottery will then go nationwide in May and June, China’s Sports Lottery Administration Center announced last week.
The Olympic-themed instant lottery has five varieties and features different themes such as “To be No 1″ and “Good luck to China”.
The lottery tickets display the Fuwas (the five Beijing Olympic mascots), Olympic game introductions and the Olympic torch relay route and other designs.
The face value of the tickets will range from 5 to 10 yuan.
Different from other sports lotteries, which give players a 50 percent chance of winning, the instant lottery will have a 65 percent prize-winning rate, with the top prize totalling 250,000 yuan ($34,965).
Buyers will have to go to designated places to cash in tickets worth more than 5,000 yuan.
Online operation will ensure the lottery selling remains open and fair, officials say.
In 2007, China’s total lottery sales exceeded 100 billion yuan, an increase of 18 billion yuan or 20 percent over 2006, setting a 20-year record in China’s lottery history.
China launched its first lottery in June 1987. Lottery ticket sales are one of the main sources of funding for building community sports facilities and financing the country’s social welfare programs. Lottery bylaws stipulate that a minimum of 35 percent of receipts must go to the welfare sector.
The sports lottery public welfare fund contributed 2.75 billion yuan to the Beijing Olympic Games.

from: chinadaily.com.cn/olympics/2008-03/18/content_6544784.htm

More than 50 varieties of new Olympic licensed products are to go on sale, with half of them priced at around 100 yuan each, according a New Year promotional activity by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) in Beijing on Wednesday.
Most of the products are affordable Olympic badges. Among the higher-end articles, gold badges and “Yubi” jade products will attract buyers because of their combination of Olympic elements with gold and Hetian jade to highlight Chinese traditional characteristics.
Items with a limited circulation include badges featuring Olympic mascots; sets of badges with famous Chinese buildings as the theme; auspiciousness-themed and fan-type badges; silver badges promoting ancient China’s “Four Great Inventions” and many other badges with themes of Olympic sports and venues.
The high-end products also include gold and silver bars, ancient wine vessel-typed gold products, Olympic coxswain-figured gold products, and other precious metal articles.
The product named “Gold Badge and Jade Yubi” integrates precious metals with the Olympic emblem and mascots and is priced at 71,800 yuan apiece. It contains 50 grams of pure gold with a circulation of 2008.
Yubi is a round flat piece of jade with a hole in its center, usually used for ceremonial purposes in ancient China.

Gold or silver badges priced at 118 yuan each

The most expensive jade product

 from: beijing2008.cn

With a workforce of 135,000 and a tax revenue of 4.51 billion yuan in the first ten months of 2007, the central business district (CBD) in Beijing’s Chaoyang District has gained momentum, an official said.
Through October 2007, 4,799 enterprises settled in the 3.99 sq km CBD — 521 more businesses than the same period the previous year. This adds up to more than one enterprise per day, Sang Xiaowei, vice director of Beijing CBD Administrative Commission told journalists attending a press conference at the Beijing Olympic Media Center on Wednesday.
Among them, 60.33 percent or 2,895 enterprises are service industry-oriented, including 151 financial institutions and 1,460 cultural creative enterprises. In the first ten months of 2007, foreign investment amounted to 319 million U.S. dollars.
Tax revenue from businesses in the CBD amounted to 4.15 billion yuan in the first ten months of 2007, a growth of 28.73 percent or 1.01 billion yuan over the same period in 2006. As the dominant tax revenue contributor, the service industry’s share was 84.9 percent, or 3.83 billion yuan.
Sang promised to improve transport and other infrastructure facilities and upgrade services for customers in an effort to boost development in the CBD.

from: beijing2008.cn