[Courtesy of Xinhua News]
The beautiful city of Shanghai, China, is famous for its vigorous atmosphere. The vigor hikes in the New Year’s Eve with its world-famous celebrations. But Shanghai authorities decided to cancel this year’s events to avoid tragic stampede accidents.
New Year’s Eve celebration of the year 2015 at Shanghai was a tragic event, killing 36 and injuring 47 people due to a stampede. The city spokesperson Xu Wei announced the city’s decision “New Year’s Eve celebrations which were planned in areas of Bund as well as busy shopping districts like Nanjing Road, Yuyuan Garden will be cancelled.”
Citizens of Shanghai responded to the authority’s announcement with worries, disappointment, and relief. Victor Oh, a businessman living in Shanghai told Aju News Corporation “I’ve never went to those celebrations in fear of hurting myself or my family if I went with them.” He continued “I think it’s a great call made by the authority to protect people from the tragedy like last year’s.”
But Su Liu, who runs a small tourism company in Shanghai, has an opposing opinion. “People come to Shanghai to enjoy the festivities from all over the world. It’s also a time when tourism business flourishes as well as other businesses in the city” Mr. Liu pointed out.
“It would be a great disappointment to those who came from far to miss out on the fireworks and great crowds of people. Maybe the tourism industry in Shanghai will suffer losses in the end-of-year seasons in the future.”
However, the local government will open a small celebration event only open for 4,800 people who bought tickets beforehand. The numbers of people attending are very small compared to an average of 300,000 people who participated in the celebration events every year.
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