President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan will host a banquet at the Sun Island Hotel in Harbin of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province Friday noon to welcome distinguished guests attending the opening ceremony of the 9th Asian Winter Games.
Among the guests expected to attend the opening ceremony are Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, and South Korean National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik.
The 9th Asian Winter Games, scheduled for Feb 7-14, will bring together more than 1,270 athletes from 34 countries and regions, making it the largest edition in terms of participating delegations and athletes.
The opening ceremony of the Games is to unfold on Friday night.
Xi, his wife to host Asian Winter Games banquet
An iconic annual lantern show kicked off on Friday in Zigong City, southwest China's Sichuan Province, featuring hundreds of illuminated glitter lantern sets to create an immersive nightscape for visitors in the run-up to the upcoming 2026 Chinese New Year holiday, or the Spring Festival.
Covering over 43 hectares, this year's show comprises 11 clusters of large illuminated lantern lights and more than 200 groups of small and medium-sized lantern lights. The event this year will run until the end of the entire Spring Festival holiday season on March 3.
One of the highlights of the show is a cluster of lantern light sets created upon inspiration by over 6,000 children's paintings collected from more than 40 countries worldwide.
The show also features a drone performance on Friday with 2,026 drones in spectacular formations wowing crowds of visitors.
Iconic annual lantern show kicks off in southwest China's Sichuan
