2018 Year in Review: The News That Shocked Beijing

At the very beginning of the year, it was announced that Beijing was looking to attract more international travelers by extending visa-free entry for people transiting through the city to a full six days, twice the length of the previous policy. International visitors can now apply for a 144-hour visa-free stay in Beijing, which also covers the neighboring city of Tianjin and parts of Hebei Province, and is available to citizens from 53 countries. Applicants are required to have valid international travel documents as well as reserved tickets with a fixed date to a third destination (aside from China and their point of origin) as well as fill out the 144-hour visa-free stay permit upon arrival along with an arrival/departure card.

In mid-January, frequent fliers were ecstatic to hear that China was to finally end its ban on mobile phone use during commercial air travel. Hainan Airlines was the first Chinese carrier to take advantage of the new policy, with the country's other carriers quickly following suit. Pictures taken onboard the first flight to allow cell phone use showed ecstatic passengers brandishing their phones, some of whom went as far as to call the experience as "miraculous". Previously, punishments for onboard cell phone use included a RMB 50,000 fine, a measure that already seems like a thing of the very distant past.

In January, a self-proclaimed "foreigner" was detained by Beijing police after she refused to submit for a body search at Beijing International Capital Airport. Surveillance video showed the unidentified woman refusing to be frisked at the airport's security checkpoint, reportedly telling the security personnel, "Don't touch me." After arguing with the police and claiming to be a foreign national, she ended up missing her plane and then repeatedly requested the intervening police officer to compensate her for her ticket. Instead, the officer ended up having her committed to 15 days of administrative detention for failing to submit to the security check and disturbing public order. And, as police later found out, she was not a foreign national at all but rather a Chinese national who, after years of living abroad, had retained her Mandarin fluency.

Beijing's first official snowfall of 2018 arrived on Jan 21, bringing with it the coldest temperatures of this winter. The year's first snowfall arrived 53 days after the expected date of Nov 29, the average first snowfall according to records from 1981 to 2010. The delayed snowfall, however, didn't come close to the latest snowfall in Beijing recorded history, which occurred on Feb 11, 1984, nor to the late snowfall of 2011 that landed on Feb 10. As for the first snowfall of winter 2019, we're still waiting...

At the onset of Spring Festival, a knife attack by a 35-year-old man from Henan named Zhu at Joy City Mall in Xidan left one woman dead and 12 people injured. The suspect was apprehended shortly after the attack and confessed to the crime, adding that he carried out the armed attack in order to vent his grievances upon society.

In March, it was bad news for Bruno Mars fans after the singer's proposed Beijing show was canceled. News of the cancelation came when promoter Damai cancelled the application it had filed with the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture to host the concert just a week before. To add insult to injury, Mars' three other China shows, two in Shanghai and one in Guangzhou, went ahead as planned. In canceling, Mars joined the ever-growing list of musicians who have pulled out of playing in the capital.

In March, Wudaokou barflies were perplexed to head to their favorite hangouts only to be met with signs that specified "as requested by local authorities, we can only allow a maximum of 10 foreigners into our store at any one time." Owners of the establishments in question, Pyro Pizza and Lush café,  declined to comment at the time but it was assumed that these were arbitrary measures enforced by the authorities to either protect any "soft targets" or ensure crowds of foreigners couldn't gather during the ongoing and sensitive Two Sessions of the National People's Congress. Strangely, no other venues appeared to be affected and it left many a student questioning whether they were the dreaded "10th foreigner" needed to tip the scales.

Beijingers woke up to extremely thick haze and PM10 levels of over 2,000 on Mar 28 as a sandstorm settled over the capital and painted our WeChat Moments a lovely beige color. The high AQI was made all the more shocking given that it followed one of the best winters Beijing had seen in five years, with an estimated 50 percent fewer emissions over the winter compared to 2017. Rather than a fluke, the decrease in pollution was attributed by one expert as actual progress given that the weather between the years was nearly the same as in previous years. Based off of that, the prospects for Beijing's air quality this winter bode well.

In late April, an unidentified flying object made a surprise appearance over western Beijing and throughout parts of northeastern China and was witnessed by multiple residents. The object was difficult to miss thanks to a bright cone-shaped funnel and a cork-screw "tail" behind it which was initially shining downward, then sharply altered course, and then finally disappeared. No official report explaining the phenomenon was released until a day after the sightings, leaving time for netizens to run wild with theories. When a statement was finally released, via People's Daily, the government explained that the UFO was in fact a rare type of cloud. Needless to say, nobody believed them.

Finally, probably the biggest story of this year was that of a very loud explosion near the US Embassy. The bang and the resulting large cloud of smoke were witnessed by a number of people lining up to access the embassy's visa services. It later turned out that a lone assailant, named by police as 26-year-old "Jiang" from Inner-Mongolia, had attempted to throw an explosive device over the fence of the US Embassy. However, the device failed to clear the fence and instead detonated nearby, inflicting non-life-threatening injuries to the assailant's hand as well as damaging a parked police van.