Promoting tradition

An awarding conference was held in the Great Hall of People to commend units and individuals that have made outstanding achievements in developing Chinese culture in the past few years.

Sponsored by the China Traditional Culture Promotion Council, the conference attracted hundreds of people from government, art circles and the media.

Chinese film stars Tang Guoqiang and Yu Yang were awarded the prize of "Outstanding person in promoting Chinese traditional culture."

Fund for aged

China Aging Development Foundation (CADF) was established in Beijing this Monday and the China Aged Care Fund was also launched in the opening ceremony of CADF.

So far the foundation already raised 20 million yuan (US$2.5 million) from across the world.

The U.S. Washington Hospital Management and the China aging Development Foundation will invest 20 billion US dollars to upgrade China's healthcare for seniors, according to an agreement signed last Friday.

The initial investment of 200 million US dollars will be used to set up a service center for the aging population in Shanghai. The service chain will be extended to Beijing, Hainan, Qingdao and other places.

The China Aging Development Foundation is a non-profit organization under the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

In China, people aged above 60 years old account for 11 per cent of the 1.3 billion population, which puts the government under intensifying pressure to take care of the aging population.

MP3 aigo leads trend

Huaqi information Digital Technology recently started promoting its new MP3 player, the aigo F566, across China to stave off competition from domestic and foreign counterparts.

Huaqi is the country's leading manufacturer of portable digital music players in China.

The state-of-the-art aigo F566 MP3 player boasts precise ergonomic design with stylish glass shape, making this tiny machine a joy to use. It also features UV-coated and polarized lenses (by Polaroid Corporation) with high performance durable optical frame for extra protection, built-in voice recorder for digital voice recording, supporting computer data files storage, with blue and orange color LED indicators.

It can even remember last played track and resumes playback on next power on.

With the increasing number of personal computers and Internet usage across the country, along with many free online music resources, the MP3 player market has enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy, explosive growth in China.

aigo, Samsung, Zarva, DEC and BenQ were the market leaders for January-June 2005.

These MP3 player producers always try their best to develop the tiny machine's design and function to attract the youth trendy frontier.

The aigo MP3 F566 is the first sunglass-shape players in the market and is expected to lead the MP3 trend for months.

(China Daily 12/30/2005 page17)