New plates snatched up

CAR owners in Shenzhen and three other cities lined up yesterday to take the nation’s first personalized car plates.Over 20 new car owners joined a queue at the Shenzhen vehicle plates’ center Sunday, hoping to get their preferred numbers.Police had said only 500 plates would be issued yesterday. But a total of 810 plates were issued after police decided to scrap the quota to meet the strong demand.A Ms. Chen, who spent the whole night in front of the center, got the 001.001 number she wanted for her BMW, the first new plate number registered in Shenzhen.Car owners still preferred the number “6,” which many people believe symbolizes happiness, and “8,” which is believed to symbolize getting rich. Within the first two hours, 23 plate numbers containing “168” were issued.Numbers with “001” were also hotly pursued. Car owners had apparently carefully designed their choices, such as VIP.001 and CHN.001. In Beijing, CHN is off-limits to car owners because it stands for China.Some Shenzhen car owners came up with fantastic numbers, like UFO-001, and numbers incorporating FBI or CIA.In Beijing, more than 1,165 car plates were issued in the morning, with the first plate numbering 123.456. In Tianjin and Hangzhou, car owners also had to form long queues to get their ideal numbers.Authorities have tried to ease concerns that car plate “squatters” could abuse the new system to seek profits from big firms by taking up numbers containing the abbreviations of company names. All car plates will have to be changed when the cars are transferred, according to the rules.Police in the four cities have urged car owners not to rush, saying the new system will increase the limit of numbers from 340,000 to 36 million for each city, allowing vehicle owners to select their favorite numbers.The new system, which is on trial from Aug. 12 to Dec. 31, will be extended to more cities next year before it is adopted nationwide.(SD News)