New Year fireworks burn ancient Chinese gateway

FIREWORKS set off to mark the Chinese New Year started a blaze that destroyed a 1,600-year-old city gate in the north of the country.

No deaths or injuries were reported in Friday's fire, which gutted the restored structure on the city wall of Zhengding, about 150 miles southwest of the capital Beijing.

Financial losses were estimated at 1 million yuan (94,600).

The gate was originally built in the fifth century and heavily restored in 2001 at a cost of 4million yuan.

Zhengding, which sits in the southern part of Hebei province, is famed among Chinese tourists for its ancient houses and Buddhist temples.

The fire recalled the inferno that destroyed a nearly completed hotel adjacent to state broadcaster CCTV's landmark new office building in downtown Beijing, leaving one firefighter dead.

The 9 February, 2009, blaze was started by an illegal fireworks display ordered by a top executive, now among 44 people facing criminal prosecution. Twenty-seven others have been given administrative punishments, and the broadcaster ordered to pay 3 million yuan. One year on, the luxury Mandarin Oriental hotel remains a charred wreck.