"The guards told me that from now on, kite-flying is forbidden in parks and I should go to other public green land to fly kites," said Lu, who has been flying kites in Luxun Park four years ago after retirement.

With the introduction of a new regulation issued recently by the Shanghai Municipal Gardening Administrative Bureau, starting this month flying of any kinds of kites is banned in all of the city's 125 parks.

However, there was no word on punishment for any violation.

Bureau officials said that kite flying often led to various mishaps in parks. For example, seedlings got entangled in kite threads and were often destroyed; or greenhorn flyers allowed the kites to drop down by wind force, forcing them to land on other visitors to the park, who got scratched or hurt by the sharp thread.

"Some kites even landed on overhead electric lines causing short circuits," added a bureau official.

"In fact, we have been discouraging kite-flying even before the rule went into effect. As a result we haven't had any untoward incident in our park," said Cheng Yinglin, an official of the Shanghai People's Park near People's Square.

(eastday.com October 9, 2002)