The 16-day Olympic festival has come to the end, but it leaves to Beijing citizens not only the honor of the host, but also the legacy of the facilities.

People can access the stadiums for sports

"We can play badminton in a modern Olympic-standard stadium every week."Living opposite the Beijing Industrial University, Zhang Zhongjun spends only five minutes to get to the Olympic Badminton Stadium.

As the only large stadium in the southeast of Beijing, Beijing Industrial University Stadium will be used as a training base for basketball, volleyball, ping pong, tennis, aerobics, dance, terpsichore, and other activities after the Olympics. Huge numbers of locals from the area will be able to practice these without a long trip.

Available sports stadiums number not only the 31 newly-built or renovated Olympic venues themselves, but also 20 Olympic visional projects near the main stadiums, 30 ball-game fields, and 10 hectares near the Olympic Garden for football, basketball and tennis. Together with community gymnasiums and nearly six thousand exercise apparatus, these all meet the people's need for local sports and exercise facilities.

Brazil's national broadcaster Agencia Brasil reported that another Beijing outlet should not be ignored - senior citizens practicing Tai Chi in parks. The Beijing Municipal Government has provided diverse sports facilities in over 1000 public areas.

2 extra months of blue sky per year

Russian State News Agency RIA Novosti praised the progress that Beijing has made in improving its environment: "The Beijing Olympic Committee kept their word. People saw blue skies over Beijing, and they enjoyed the experience. Beijing delivered on their commitment."

Beijing did indeed make great efforts to improve the environment after the successful Olympic bid. Up to 2006, Beijing's landscaping ratio was 50.5%. By the end of 2007, three key ratios - the urban landscaping ratio, mountain area landscaping ratio, and urban green cover percentage – had risen to 51.6%, 70.49% and 43% separately.

Over the past seven years, the number of blue sky days has risen by 2-9% each year. By 2007, the total number of blue sky days had increased to 246 from 185 in 2001. This equates to two extra months of fresh air each year for Beijing citizens.

After Olympics there will be more restrictions on the vehicles that fail to meet the European No.1 standard for exhaust emissions, and Beijing will keep making progress on environment improvement, the Municipal Environment Protection Bureau announced. Beijing will further study the policy on vehicle pollution discharge fee, and block the enterprises that could not meet standards within the given time. The State Council has released that the public vehicles of government should be off the road for one day every week, which would contribute to environment protection but also save energy.

"Public transportation times"came

The 2008 Olympic Games brought unprecedented chance and challenge to the traffic of Beijing. Beijing came to its "golden times" in traffic construction as of the opening day of subway line 10. Before the Olympics, Beijing just also finished and opened the subway line 10, Olympic sub line and airport line. Till then the subway running kilometers in Beijing reached 200 kms.

(China.org.cn by Hou Xiaoying September 4, 2008)