Pyramid sound and light show

Ethiopia's northern neighbor, Egypt, held a special light and sound show at the world famous Pyramids Tuesday.

The shows have been held for half a century, but as LIFESTYLES shows you, there were several changes this year.

For 50 years, Egypt has ushered in the new year with a spectacular light and sound show at the world famous Pyramids Plateau.

But, this year there was a new addition.

Since more and more Chinese people are now visiting Egypt, Chinese and Japanese were added as official languages of the show! 
  
SOUNDBITE: ZAHI HAWASS, EGYPT OFFICIAL
"The number of Chinese tourists visiting Egypt may be low, but I think it' s important to have interest in Chinese and Japanese languages, in order to establish a sort of understanding with those countries through their own languages."
  
The introduction of Chinese in the Sound and Light Shows comes with a 46 percent increase in the number of Chinese tourists who visited Egypt from January to August 2010.
  
That number is expected to grow to 100,000 by the end of 2011.

SOUNDBITE: ISSAM ABDEL HADY, CHAIRMAN OF SOUND AND LIGHT COMPANY
"Chinese tourist have started to go outside China and visit all of the countries across the world. They started to visit Egypt. So, we started to increase the number of languages used in the shows.   We currently have the shows performed in nine languages covering most of the foreign communities in the country. We started recently to consider the use of Chinese as a contribution to tourism in Egypt. This will encourage Chinese visitors as they find Chinese shows part of the nightly tourism in Egypt."

Chinese and Japanese joins English, Spanish, Russian, Polish, French, German, Italian and Arabic as official languages for the shows.