China's Guangzhou city ready to host Asian Games

The Chinese city of Guangzhou has announced it is ready to host the 16th Asian Games.

The 16th Asian Games will take place in Guangzhou from November 12 to 27. Guangzhou is the second city in China to host the Games after Beijing in 1990.

Over 14,000 athletes, trainers and coaches from 45 countries and regions are expected to compete in a total of 476 events in 42 sports.

All 53 competition venues and 17 training venues available for the Games are ready. These include the Asian Games Town, which consists of the Athletes' Village, Technical Officials' Village, Media Village, Main Media Centre and International Broadcast Centre.

Reports indicate that a series of test events entitled "Vigorous Guangzhou" have commenced from May and will go on till September prior to the Opening Ceremony of the 16th Asian Games.

The "Vigorous Guangzhou" series of test events includes a number of provincial sporting events (accounting for 60 per cent), national competition events (accounting for 30 per cent) and regional or international competitions (accounting for 10 per cent), covering 34 of the Guangzhou Asian Games sports and five of the Guangzhou Asian Para Games sports.

Thirty-seven sport events under the name of "Vigorous Guangzhou" are to be held in the Games competition venues in Guangzhou, with the other two in the co-host cities of Foshan and Dongguan respectively.

Guangzhou is also paying host to the Asian Para Games from December 12 to 19, 2010, two weeks after the conclusion of the 16th Asian Games, featuring 3,000 athletes from 41 Asian countries and regions competing in 19 sports.

The 2010 Asian Para Games will feature 19 sports, including 17 Paralympic sports and two non-Paralympic sports.

There will be 26 venues for the Games, including 19 competition venues and seven training venues, clustered in four major areas: The Guangdong Olympic Sports Centre, Tianhe Sports Centre, Higher Education Mega Centre and Asian Games Town.

It is the first time the two Games have been be held in one city.

Many old apartment buildings in Guangzhou are getting a new look ahead of the Asian Games.

Guangzhou plans to invest a total of seven billion yuan before the Asian Games to spruce up the city, including renovation of old buildings and roads.

To project a better city image during the Asian Games, Guangzhou has been replacing about 1,000 old flat roofs with new red roofs made of synthetic resin since the end of 2009, according to the Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

China has also steeped up security surveillance ahead of the Asian Games.

"You have entered into an area that is being monitored by an intelligent video surveillance system," read the black Chinese characters on a board near an entrance to Huaqiao Xincun on the busy Huanshidong road in Guangzhou's Yuexiu District, reports China Daily.

The tiny surveillance camera is operational round the clock. Guangzhou residents have welcomed the video cameras with open arms.

Meanwhile, tickets for the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games and Asian Para Games are on sale to the public worldwide since Monday (July 26).

The public can log onto the official ticketing Web site of the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games to apply for the tickets. Each person can only submit a booking request, but all the four ceremonies can be applied for in one booking with fewer than two tickets for every ceremony.

A total of 5,000 tickets will be available to the public for the Opening Ceremony of the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games and another 5,000 for the Closing Ceremony.

For the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Para Games, 10,000 tickets for the Opening Ceremony will be sold and another 10,000 will be available for the Closing Ceremony.