An intangible cultural heritage (ICH)-themed event kicked off in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year, which falls on Jan. 29.
The event featured nearly 100 types of intangible cultural heritage crafts, cultural creations, and traditional foods from across the country. "I feel an increasingly strong festive atmosphere here, and I hope friends from all over the country will come to Xi'an. Welcome to Xi'an!" said Cheng Lanxin, a local resident.
"Welcome to Xi 'an to experience our splendid traditional culture," said Duan Weigang, an intangible cultural heritage inheritor.
The 52-day-long cultural fair will introduce 173 special New Year customs activities, including the Chang'an Lantern Festival and cultural research programs. These efforts aim to inherit and promote excellent traditional Chinese culture, stimulate consumption, and offer another festive cultural tourism feast full of Xi'an characteristics for residents, domestic and international tourists.
"We add traditional Chinese symbols of auspiciousness, good luck, fortune, emolument, longevity, happiness to our paintings, combining them with modern cartoons to create something that appeals to both refined and popular tastes. In this painting, the seven colors -- red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple -- represent sunshine and passion. This serves as a way for everyone to engage closely with the inheritance of our national culture," said Li Haihong, fourth generation inheritor of intangible cultural heritage cotton batting painting.
The fair set up 90 booths, showcasing a total of 110 representative projects. In the paper cutting area, representative inheritor Tu Yonghong from Xi'an presented a set of paper-cutting related to New Year customs.
"Paper cutting is essential to the festive atmosphere. We should attract more young people and help them to understand it and carry on the tradition," said Tu.
Ancient city Xi'an holds cultural event for Chinese New Year
Former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi praised China's economic transformation, saying its innovation-driven growth has exceeded global forecasts, in an exclusive interview with China Central Television (CCTV) aired Friday.
During his tenure as prime minister, Prodi chose China as his first overseas destination outside of Europe, leading a large delegation of political and business figures on the trip in 1984. He subsequently visited China multiple times during his term, driving bilateral ties forward with concrete actions.
Speaking on China's economic transition, Prodi noted that the country's transition to an innovation-led industrial model has advanced quickly and produced broad benefits.
"If you take the technology and technology progress, I am an economist, nobody could have never dreamt such a change. Everybody knew that China was efficient in production and industry productivity also. But to increase the value chain, as China did and very high tech, which was not in our forecast. When I observe the Chinese society, I think that the technology is spread among people more than in Europe. The absorption of the new ideas, of new technology in this moment in China is very, very quick. In some of these fields the primacy has been achieved in much time before I could imagine," he said.
As a former professor of economics, Prodi believes what sets China apart from other countries is a unique, integrated value chain with its industry covers everything from textiles to high-tech manufacturing and seamlessly connects all production stages.
"And the popular feeling, the most important achievements are the new mass production, new high-tech mass production - electrical cars, batteries, solar energy, wind energy, you know - totally new and mass production. And in these fields China is unique and no other country, there is no other achievement in the world of this type. But in the meanwhile, China preserves the production of intermediate goods, and so on and so on," Prodi said.
China’s innovation-driven growth surpasses global expectations: former Italian PM
