Shenzhen

"Ode to the Trailblazers," a music-and-dance show staged on the 10th anniversary of Shenzhen's establishment as China's first "special economic zone," displayed a bizarre mix of old propaganda forms and new artistic freedoms.

The Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, China's showcase for economic liberalization, is planning a public land auction next month, the pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao said Saturday. The paper said the auction, the first since 1949, is part of China's plan to reform its land policy, and the Shenzhen zone, bordering Hong Kong, has been chosen for the experiment.

More than 80 workers, mostly women, died and dozens more were severely burned Friday in a fire that swept through a plastic-toy factory in southern China. Many of the casualties were blamed on locked or sealed windows and doors that prevented workers from escaping, Hong Kong newspapers said today. The fire raced through the first two stories of the three-story Zhili Handicraft Factory in Kuiyong, near the southern Chinese boom town of Shenzhen.

At least 18 people were crushed to death and 34 injured in a stampede at an overcrowded movie theater in Guangdong province in southern China. The accident occurred Monday in an open-air theater near Shenzhen as a new audience crowded in at the end of the first showing.

The death toll rose to 11 Sunday in the collapse of a toy factory in southern China, a newspaper reported. Hong Kong's New Evening Post said 63 people were hospitalized in the collapse, which occurred Saturday in Longgang, about 12 miles northeast of the boom city of Shenzhen.

Thousands of Chinese have flooded a McDonald's office in southern China where the American fast-food giant is hiring employees for its first restaurant in this communist nation, a company official said today. McDonald's plans to open a 500-seat restaurant in the economic boom town of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, on Oct. 8. Two Shenzhen newspaper ads this week drew more than 6,000 applicants for 240 part-time jobs, an official at the Shenzhen McDonald's said.