Today In Beijing

Beijing today will be, as my friend Jenny might say, mad as an arse full of bats. Immense in every way, every day, this city of planetary movements.

Today, Beijing will welcome around 260 new lives, perhaps at one of the city's 18 specialised maternity care hospitals. Or at one of the other 519 hospitals in the capital. One of Beijing's nearly 40,000 certified doctors will cut the umbilical chord to hear the screams of Beijing's newest resident add to the city's cry.

Friends and family will be notified of the birth during several of the more than 4.1 million mobile phone calls made today on Beijing's cellular networks.

Making a call will be relatively easy since nearly everyone seems to own a mobile phone - a reported 12.5 million handsets. If they don’t, it will be simple to buy one today. A quarter of a million mobile phones will be added to the Beijing market.

A relative in another province or living abroad will receive the news of the baby’s birth written in one of the 1.7 million letters posted at one of the capitals thousands of post boxes.

In joining the happy family at hospital, a friend will get in one of the city's 2.5 million road vehicles and drive along Beijing's proudly cleaned streets. Everyday here, teams of workers sweep clean over 112.5 square kilometres of roads.

1.5 million of Beijing's cars are owned privately, the remainder by government and business.

1600 cars will be made today. 1500 of them will be bought.

Elsewhere in the municipality, 15.4 million people will wake up in their average sized living spaces of 50 square metres each and prepare to join the masses on the streets. 14.4 million people will form urban passenger traffic on buses, taxis, trains and subway cars. Some of this traffic will travel on Beijing’s staggering 1125 kilometres of railway lines. If it’s an average day, 68,000 will be dispatched from Beijing’s main railway station in the centre of the city.

Across the country today, China's trains will carry a quarter of the world's total passenger and freight rail transport, having only 6 per cent of the world’s operational track.

Of the 7.5 million registered employed in Beijing it's just another day at the office. The worker will make 48.4 kuai today (about A$7.20) and will spend three quarters of it, mainly on living costs.

If you're a policeman, it's a busy day today. Your force will attend 17 major road accidents. Nineteen people will be carted off to hospital as a result.

For four people, Beijing's traffic will prove fatal today.

There will be fires in 23 places across the city today, each hopefully answered by one of the city's 381 fire trucks.

Beijing will open its doors today. The city will welcome 9945 new international tourists. 228 will be Australian, a number up 130 per cent from the same day last year.

They will have the choice of Beijing’s 594 hotels, and will not find much competition for rooms in places with average occupancy hovering between a half and a third. They might take a trip to one of the city’s 34 museums, read up on culture in one of 26 public libraries, or see the tiny number of films presented in China on a screen at one of 160 movie theatres.

International tourism will be dwalfed by domestic tourism today. Nearly 350,000 Chinese tourists will descend on Beijing, and today contribute towards an annual 356 million yuan (A$53 million) tourism spending spree in the capital.

For every 100 households in Beijing, there are 206 bikes. If you are one of nearly 860,000 secondary school students, you might ride one of these bikes to school at one of the city’s 3782 total schools (including primary schools).

The registered 672,000 construction workers will join the myriad unregistered on an uncountable number of construction sites (official numbers differ wildly; Xinhua says 8000 ongoing sites, 30 per cent of which don’t meet environmental regulations on pollution).

The great pageant of human life and love will be celebrated at 256 weddings, fewer than a similar day last year. More couples will get divorced today than a similar day last year. 66 couples will finalise divorces today and call it quits.

There will, of course, be crying in the city today. 216 people will die in Beijing at the average age of 76.

[note: numbers based on figures in the 2006 China Statistical Year Book, which compiles statistics mainly from 2005].