BEIJING -- After eight months under wraps, a refurbished Tiananmen Square reopened to the public Monday with new tank-proof paving, rules against chewing gum and a Catch-22 that temporarily banished one of the giant plaza's greatest charms: its kite fliers.
The square, China's symbolic political heart and home to massive pro-democracy protests in 1989, had been closed since October for a facelift ahead of this year's 50th anniversary of the founding of Communist China on Oct. 1.Thousands of people gathered at dawn Monday to watch a military honor guard perform with clockwork precision the daily unfurling of China's red flag on the north end of the square, the world's largest.
Later, as people flooded the square, the kite enthusiasts who would daily turn the square's skies into a ballet of colors and shapes before the renovation were absent.
New regulations require kite fliers to obtain a permit before taking advantage of the square's open space and steady breezes. But enthusiasts who tried to obtain their licenses Monday were told that the permit office would not open until Thursday, meaning that kite-flying was, for the moment, forbidden.
City government officials said the rule was aimed against peddlers who used to sell kites to tourists and to better manage the square. One official said the rule wouldn't apply to foreign tourists.
New regulations also banned people from spitting chewing gum on the square's new granite paving and from taking stools onto the square to watch the flag raising and lowering ceremonies every morning and night, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said.
The 1.7 million square feet of granite slabs that replaced concrete paving is so tough that if armored vehicles drive across it during the military parade planned for the anniversary, they "won't have any effect," the official Beijing Youth Daily report said.