For years most Beijingers have had to endure a "long march" and a long queue to get their most important meal of the day.

The typical breakfast of fried dough sticks or steaming buns with or without filling served at makeshift open-air stands encircled by shabby tables and chairs seemed hardly worth the effort.

But a new city project is likely to change things for the better. Seven hundred breakfast providers, set up according to the strict rules of the city's Breakfast Project, are expected to open for business in urban Beijing this month.

The project aims to help 90 per cent of Beijing's urban residents find "convenient, healthy and delicious" breakfasts within a five- to 10-minute walk from their home within three years.

Residents can expect to buy healthy breakfasts from these retailers, ranging from the traditional dough sticks and buns to other items like breads, cakes, sandwiches, milk, eggs, and soya-bean milk.

"All foods sold by these retailers would be semi-prepared on strictly controlled production lines, with their cooking finished in a carefully controlled hygienic environment," said Yang Xinjing, a publicity official with the Beijing Municipal Commercial Committee.

Beijing Jinsanyuan New Century Investment Co Ltd, which will implement the Breakfast Project in eastern Beijing's Chaoyang District, said it would consider the nutrition make-up of the foods, and sell special "healthy sets" in both Chinese and western styles.

Some of the new breakfast providers will deliver by request with no extra charge.

Wan Quanshan, a retired teacher living in the Huashi area of southern Beijing's Chongwen District, said he will actually miss the "long march" to breakfast stands, which he has come to view as a special form of morning exercise.

But having the chance to get his favourite deep-fired dough sticks unburnt for a change is "too sweet a compensation," he said.

Breakfast has been a headache for Beijing people. A survey by the commercial committee found that over 70 per cent of local people are dissatisfied with present breakfast options. The most common complaints were that available breakfasts are neither convenient nor healthy.

Less than 20 per cent of Beijing's more than 30,000 legally registered restaurants provide breakfast, leaving most breakfast seekers no choice but to go to peddlers without proper licenses.

( China Daily September 12, 2002)