And two more railway bureaus, Shenyang and Wuhan, have opened ticket-booking service by phone to the public, as six other pilot bureaus did last year.

Pupils at the Professional Gymnastics School in Shenyang, north-east China.

Curious to see the changes for myself, I visited Shenyang last month.

"I don't know what is regarded as 'vulgar,' but I know audiences like my performances," Little Shenyang says.

The day before, Web sites that focus on China's military had run the same photograph, snapped outside the Shenyang plant in northeast China where the plane is being developed.