The Beijing Capital International Airport has been helping to promote environmental awareness among its passengers by staging an 11-day exhibition of prize-winning works from the 2012 Chinese Children's Environmental Education Program at Terminal No 3 starting early June.

Due to the terminal's busy traffic, thousands of passengers heading for international flights or the Ground Transport Center are estimated to have enjoyed the 20 first-prize-winning pieces selected from more than 620,000 entries submitted by children all over the country.

"These original, imaginative works have garnered a lot of attention from passengers," said a source with the airport.

The event was held in collaboration with the environmental education program to celebrate the International Environment Day, which falls on June 5 each year.

This is the second time that the program's award-winners have exhibited at this airport, the first being April 2011.

Launched in November 2009, the program promotes environmental protection among schoolchildren in China and is the largest campaign organized by the United Nations Environmental Program.

Creative imagination shown in children's works is one theme of the exhibition, which is also expected to be held in the Beijing National Stadium, known locally as the Bird's Nest.

"In my heart, the home planet is a place where we humans and wild animals are equal," said Cao Zhenrui, a winner from the Middle School Attached to Northern Jiaotong University, whose painting features a bear telling something to a circle of human kids.

"Since the Earth did not come into existence only for human beings, we should share it with animals," the student added.

Through the country's major hub of air transportation, the children's works can reach the largest possible audience, thus making it possible to promote environmental protection across the globe, Cai Yuhong, a project officer of the environmental education program, told China Daily.

Beijing Capital International Airport, whose history can be traced back to 1958, has ascended rapidly in rankings of the world's busiest airports in the past decade. It was the second busiest airport in the world in terms of passenger throughput as of 2011.

Terminal No 3 houses a number of domestic and international flights, including Air China, Lufthansa, United Airlines and Air Canada,and is larger than London Heathrow Airport's five terminals combined.

In recent years, the airport has served as a venue for art events of public interest.

Besides the two exhibitions held in collaboration with the environmental education program, it also housed a show in 2007 featuring paintings created by kids orphaned by AIDS.

lifusheng@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/19/2012 page7)