BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Amid further containment of COVID-19, China is powering ahead in bringing business and life back on track. The following are the latest facts and figures:

-- Beijing and its neighboring Tianjin Municipality and Hebei Province will lower their emergency responses to the novel coronavirus epidemic from the second level to the third level starting Saturday.

-- The number of China-Europe freight trains hit a new high of 1,033 in May, up 43 percent year on year.

A record 93,000 twenty-foot equivalent units of cargo were transported by the trains, up 48 percent from a year earlier. The number of departing trains rose 47 percent year on year to 556 last month, while the number of returning trains climbed 39 percent to 477.

-- China has published measures to boost the development of the pilot free-trade zone (FTZ) in Hubei Province amid efforts to revive the coronavirus-hit economy and maintain regular epidemic containment policies.

Efforts will be made to further facilitate foreign investment, help address challenges for foreign-funded enterprises in the FTZ and encourage multinationals to set up their global or regional headquarters in Hubei, according to a document released by the Ministry of Commerce.

-- Japanese convenience store chain 7-Eleven said Wednesday its first store in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, registered over 500,000 yuan (about 70,600 U.S. dollars) of sales on opening day, breaking its global sales record.

-- Thirty-four of China's central state-owned enterprises signed contracts for 72 projects worth 327.73 billion yuan with central China's Hubei Province Wednesday to help it recover from the COVID-19 outbreak.

-- The Potala Palace in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region reopened to the public on Wednesday after being closed for more than four months due to the COVID-19 epidemic.

-- Beijing's first road catering exclusively to cyclists has seen increased traffic as commuters opt for bikes over subways and buses amid the novel coronavirus epidemic.

The 6.5-km bikeway connecting the densely populated community of Huilongguan and the high-tech hub of Shangdi in northern Beijing saw 2,000 bike trips on average during the morning rush hour in mid- and late May, some 500 trips more than the levels in October 2019, the Beijing Municipal Committee of Transport said Wednesday in a statement.

-- More students in the Shanghai Municipality returned to school as public kindergartens and the first to third grades of primary schools reopened on Tuesday.

-- Wuhan University announced late on Monday that graduating students currently in China's mainland and postgraduates with scientific research tasks currently in China's mainland may return to the university starting from June 8 as the COVID-19 epidemic subsides. Enditem

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