Two types of buses for the 2008 Olympic Games were unveiled yesterday in Beijing, adorned with Peking opera masks on their bodies, according to Beijing-based newspaper The First's report.

 

In Peking opera, there are four main types of roles: sheng (male), dan (young female), jing (painted face, male), and chou (clown, male or female). The buses chose the jing's mask designs to be painted on their bodies, The First's reported on December 19. The eye-catching buses were disclosed by the Beijing Jinghua Coach Co., LTD.

 

 

One red and black bus is fully covered with opera masks, with a semitransparent jing's mask painted on the front. All the masks were chosen from the classic Chinese novel Romance of Three Kingdoms, combining two main characters' (Guan Yu and Jiang Wei) facial features in Peking Opera.

 

The designer said that Peking opera is one of China's seminal cultural elements and that to choose the opera mask is to combine the traditional Chinese culture with the humanistic Olympics. The red color stands for devotion and loyalty, and the black represents honesty and righteousness. This type of bus will mainly operate in the Olympic activity fields and media village in 2008.

 

Another type of bus looked more modern, silver grey and designed in clipper-built pattern. The bus is equipped with an electro-motioned pedal for the disabled and uses non-pollutant fuels. The lengthened and widened seats were newly developed to consider the stature of foreign athletes.

 

 

The company staff said two buses will be perfected following the advice of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG). After the Games, the buses will be slightly refitted and operate in the daily bus lines. Beijing citizens will first see the Olympic buses among the trolleybuses.

 

(China.org.cn by Zhou Jing, December 20, 2006)