Firework displays marked the official start yesterday of China's fifth Sea Festival in the coastal city of Qingdao in east China's Shandong Province.

Jointly hosted by the State Oceanographic Administration and the Qingdao government, the eight-day festival will involve a range of activities, highlighting the sea as an appealing tourist attraction and as an important resource that is playing an ever bigger role in scientific and technical development.

Already the center of China's marine scientific research, Qingdao is steadily developing into the country's marine industrial center as well as an attractive coastal tourist destination.

It has already been chosen to host the sailing competition of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Yesterday also saw the official reopening of the city's 102-year-old bathing beach after an overall clean-up. Shabby and crowded housing was cleared away from the neighborhood, and the area was equipped with modern facilities.

Wang Liquan, a publicity officer with the Qingdao municipal government, said the reopening of the beach marks the completion of one of the major renovation projects that the city promised to undertake for the 2008 Olympics.

He said other projects to be completed over the next few years include a seaside ring road and an east-west road network.

But there is still not much to see on the site to be used for the sailing competition because the result of an international design bid will not be decided until September, according to a government source. But infrastructure facilities have already started being built, said the official, who refused to be named.

In another development, the oceanographic administration's Qingdao-based Northern Sea Sub-bureau started a three-month monitoring project on the sea area last Wednesday in order to study changes in the sea water. Summer is the most likely time for such marine disasters as red tide, an algal boom caused by excessive nutrients in the sea water due to pollution.

If pollution is detected, the sub-bureau will not only be able to come up with a solution in time but track down and punish severely those responsible, said Qin Ping, a publicity officer with the sub-bureau.

(China Daily July 7, 2003)