Balloons and dancers dressed as lions heated up the Fengtai Stadium in southern Beijing on Friday, kicking off the annual Beijing Arts Festival of Farmers, an early Spring Festival event for millions of Beijing farmers.

This year's Spring Festival falls on February 1. But the arts festival is expected to run until just before spring ploughing in early March, and is meant to bring colorful cultural activities, as well as rich materials, to the countryside.

"We have so many things, both spiritual and material, stored up for the occasion that the whole thing will be like a grand temple fair in some senses, where you see, hear and buy things," said Liu Ying, an official with the Beijing Rural Work Committee.

"All major local commercial organizations will dispatch vendors out into the countryside."

Rural Beijing is becoming an increasingly important market with expanding gross domestic product (GDP) and growing per-capita income.

In 2002, rural Beijing's GDP was 70.8 billion yuan (US$8.6 billion), an increase of 13.1 per cent. Per-capita income hit 5,880 yuan (US$710), up 12.3 per cent.

Friday, the day the arts festival began, was also the eighth day of the 12th lunar month of the year. The day is traditionally a time to serve rice porridge with nuts and dried fruit and is widely seen as the start of the Spring Festival consumption surge.

Yang Xinjing, an official with the Beijing Municipal Commercial Work Committee, said the robust sales of rice porridge on Friday was "very likely" a prelude to good sales during the Spring Festival holiday as a whole.

"We have to say the festival mood is already high in the air and it is so encouraging," he said.

By 5 pm on Friday, the barrels of porridge ingredients were almost all empty in most local supermarkets, leaving many late customers disappointed, according to a local newspaper.

"Local shops are already well prepared for the 'big time' (the expected Spring Festival expenditure surge) with complete and varied commodities in storage and lots of exciting promotional activities planned," Yang said.

(China Daily January 13, 2003)