Sightseers in Beijing will have more choices on their menu as the city plans to invest more in the tourism industry.

Deng Minshan, chief of the economic and trade section of the municipal development and reform commission, says the city will spend 1 billion yuan, about 147 million U.S. dollars, to build new tourist attractions over the next two years.

Existing tourist zones, including those based on traditional culture, modern entertainment and nature, will be upgraded.
 
Tourism generates 7 percent of the Beijing's gross domestic product. The city now has 826 star-rated hotels, ranking first in China.
 
From 2001 to 2007, overseas tourist arrivals rose to a cumulative 52 percent. The city saw gains of 30 percent and 98 percent in domestic tourist arrivals and related revenue, respectively.

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And more foreign nationals have been attracted to China's most populous city - Shanghai - this year.

According to the municipal department of labor and social security, more than 68,600 overseas nationals were working in Shanghai as of late November, that's up 12 percent from a year earlier.
 
Of the total, more than 25,000 were from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.
 
Most foreign nationals were from Japan, the United States, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Germany, France, Canada, Malaysia, Australia and Britain.

In 1996, fewer than 5,000 foreigners registered for work.

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Fan Meizhong paid once more for his argument that there was nothing wrong with his flight from a classroom in the Sichuan quake, as a Beijing school which had decided to take him on was forced to delay employing him.

Keyfind Education School, a private training institution, says it has decided to indefinitely postpone hiring Fan as a researcher and lecturer due to pressure from the media, even though the school has already signed a two-year contract with Fan.
 
Fan's resurfacing became a new subject of debate as many people held that he was no longer suitable to continue work in the educational sector and that the school had just used the teacher for publicity.

A former Chinese language teacher at a private high school in quake-hit Dujiangyan City, Sichuan Province, he was nicknamed "running Fan" by netizens after he left his students behind and escaped the classroom as the 8-magnitude quake struck.
 
None of Fan's students were hurt during the quake. But about ten days after the May 12 quake, Fan became a target as he explained in his online post that "only for the sake of his daughter can he consider sacrificing himself at the life and death moment."
 
Some appreciated his courage in speaking the truth while others accused him of being selfish and breaking the moral ethics of a teacher. He was later fired by the private high school.
 
Fan is now still in his Sichuan home. He still insisted Sunday he had done nothing wrong.