Tourist visits hit three-year high at major scenic spots

The giant container ship MSC Mia moored at the Songyu container wharf recently, the first major vessel to visit Xiamen Port in the Chinese new year. Capable of carrying up to 23,000 containers, the 400-meter ship loaded and unloaded more than 3,000 containers during its visit.

All of Xiamen Port's wharfs operated non-stop during the Spring Festival holiday, with a collective daily throughput exceeding 20,000 containers and a total throughput of 125,000 containers.

The Songyu container wharf is a deep-water wharf built for large-size ships and round-the-clock operations. During the Spring Festival holiday, it processed more than 22,000 containers from ships plying six ocean routes.

City officials announced last week that guest traffic at major shopping centers increased 20 percent year-on-year thanks to a shopping carnival sponsored by local authorities. The promotional campaign involved more than 100 promotion activities such as discounts, product exhibitions, vouchers and financial subsidies.

Representatives of Xiamen's Culture and Tourism bureau announced recently that Xiamen-based tourism companies offered more than 100 rural tourism products during this year's Spring Festival holiday season.

Authorities cited examples such as tea time in the Minnan-styled courtyards of the tourism complex in the village of Zhaizaiwei in Xiangan. Other examples included family-based offerings at the Jimei Dadi Agricultural Education Base, where guests fish, pluck eggs from henhouses and learn about traditional Chinese culture.

Offerings in Tongan included health-related tours at local hot spring resorts.

The Jedi Counterattack of Chinese Table Tennis movie officially debuted on January 24. The Xiamen Hengye Film Company produced the movie, the first film to be released after Spring Festival that was produced by a Xiamen-based production company .

Other new and upcoming films with input from Xiamen enterprises include Wandering Earth 2, Man Jianghong, Exchange Life and Bear Comes and Comes with Me Bear Core.

According to a report by the National Institute of Finance of Tsinghua University, Xiamen ranked among China's top cities from 2019 to 2022 in terms of the number of film filing enterprises and the number of film productions with movies that ranked in the top 50 at the box office.

XiamenAir officials announced in advance of the holiday travel season the return of non-stop flights between Xiamen and Manila. Christina Garcia Frasco, the Secretary of Tourism of the Philippines, and Huang Xilian, the ambassador of China to the Philippines, greeted the inaugural flight.

XiamenAir operates 38 flights covering 10 air routes to cities in the Philippines such as Cebu, Davao, Kalibo and Manila. The airline boasts the industry's largest flight capacity between China and the Philippines.

A number of locally-based companies last month issued forecasts for their annual reports. Net profits increased by more than 90 percent last year for Xiamen Tungsten Xinneng. The firm's revenue topped 28.7 billion yuan, up by more than 80 percent.

Tebao Biology's net profits surged by more than 50 percent last year. Net profits for the parent company reached an estimated 274 million yuan to 278 million yuan.

At Yilian Network, profits are expected to top 2.1 billion yuan, up year-on-year increase by at least 30 percent.

A Xiamen University School of Medicine led by Wang Kejia announced recently that it may have found an immunological mechanism to treat addiction to opioids such as morphine. The breakthrough might make it possible to treat opioid addiction through immune intervention.

This research team recently published the results of its study in the international journal Cell. The study looked at changes in the peripheral immune microenvironment of the addictive population. The research established an immunological relationship between regulatory T-cells and addictive withdrawal behavior.

The city's Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security recently announced plans for more than 150 specialized job fairs this year. The plans call for in-person and online job fairs at both the district and city level as well as at talent service institutions.

Officials described the program as part of the city's efforts to improve local incomes and boost the local economy in the first quarter of the year.

Xiamen Ocean High-tech Industrial Park representatives announced recently that the organization received Fujian approval for a new provincial-level high-tech zone.

Park officials said that a new Xiamen Marine High-tech Zone would leverage the city's coast location, improve local marine innovation resources and optimize the area's entrepreneurial environment.

Fujian is currently home to four provincial-level high-tech zones: Longyan Wuping, Nanping, Quanzhou Semiconductor and Xiamen Ocean.

City officials recently announced that work on the new campus of the Jimei Middle School is slated to wrap up next year prior to admitting students for the fall semester. Work is currently underway on the facility's foundation and main structure.

The school is located near the Xiamen North Railway Station in Jimei New Town. It is serviced by the subway system's Line One. 

The site covers a total land area of around 70,000 square meters and a total construction area of 74,500 square meters. The school will accommodate 3,000 middle school students in 60 classrooms.

厦门日报社新媒体中心出品
来源：CommonTalk Weekly
编辑：严琦 值班首编：张薇薇