The several prolonged holidays every year have brought tremendous business opportunities not only to tourism, communications but also Beijing's cultural market. During the "Labors' Day" lengthened holidays of this year, Beijing presented a total of over 100 splendid performances. The tickets of more than 30 shows staged in Beijing Concert Hall and Zhongshan Park Music Hall had been sold out even before the "May 1" holidays. The vocal concert of "New Beijing, Great Olympics" held in Beijing Workers' Stadium on the evening of May 1 attracted nearly 60,000 audiences with ticket price raised to 1,000 yuan for each. Besides, 1,000 and more fans without tickets were found listening out of the stadium.

As capital of six dynasties in history, Beijing, rich in cultural connotation, has several nationwide famous distribution markets of cultural relics like Liulichang and Panjiayuan. Besides, several large auctions of cultural relics are held here every year. The most famous are spring and autumn auctions of Beijing Hanhai Art Auction Corporation with a trade volume of as much as 0.1 billion yuan achieved each time. Furthermore, Beijing has planned to set up a Liulichang Ancient Culture Industry Park Zone and Tongzhou Oriental Culture and Art Industry Park Zone in order to develop Beijing's cultural industry and to build them into cultural commercial centers of China.

Beijing's book retailing trade also enjoys a leading position in China. Beijing Book Building and Wangfujing Bookstore located in Xidan and Wangfujing, as two most famous commercial centers of Beijing, have led this trade for their remarkable sales. It is learned that Beijing Book Building's annual book sales hit 0.1 billion yuan while Wangfujing Bookstore saw 500,000 yuan of sale each day during the "May 1" holidays. Besides, spring and autumn book fairs, a cultural name brand of Beijing already, which has been held for 10 successive years, have attracted not only thousands of Beijing residents but also a great many from other cities of China. It is reported Beijing's spring book fair this year has drawn a total of 700,000 people and each booth, a little bit larger than 10 square meters, can bring its owner over 10,000 yuan of income a day.

As pointed out by people concerned that Beijing has seen a booming cultural market, and it is a necessary choice for Beijing to count on culture to develop its economy and boost its cultural industry. Nonetheless for factors of planned economy still exist alongside a flourishing cultural market, further standardization and improvement are still demanded for a healthy development of Beijing's culture market.

(People's Daily 05/08/2001)