Over 90 sports venues across the city opened to the public for free yesterday to encourage residents to participate in fitness exercises and spread fitness ideas on the 14th National Fitness Day. The announcement was made at a ceremony marking the fitness day and the launch of a series of activities at Jianshang Sports Facility in Longhua District. The venues that went free covered various sports like swimming, badminton, soccer, basketball, tennis, table tennis and rock climbing. A series of more than 60 activities including hiking, biking, philanthropic fairs, fun carnivals and scientific fitness training will be developed online and offline across the city during the National Fitness Day period. The activities, some of which will run until the end of the week, include Chinese go competitions, basketball competitions, extreme sports series, sports carnivals, soccer matches and hiking activities. For the fitness day, Longhua District prepared three “packages of gifts” for residents, which included opening three major sports venues in the district for free, inviting 100 sports venues to offer free services and organizing medical institutions to offer free physical checks. To stimulate consumption, Longhua District has issued coupons totaling 8 million yuan (US$1.18 million) in four batches, which will be given out before the end of October. Besides the 2-million-yuan coupons for sports, the coupons will also be used in stimulating tourism, cultural consumption and as business subsidies. On Thursday, Pingshan issued sports coupons that can be used at sports venues, fitness clubs and schools in the district. Every evening at 8 p.m. between Monday and Thursday and at 8 a.m. between Friday and Sunday, Shenzhen residents can snap up sports coupons at the “i深圳” app. The coupons have denomination values at 10 yuan, 20 yuan, 50 yuan, 100 yuan and 200 yuan, and can reserve sports venues in Pingshan, with one reservation per coupon allowed.