About 200 overseas Chinese joined local residents in a historic town in Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, for a traditional "Long Street Banquet" to celebrate the Lantern Festival on Wednesday, with feasting and other activities.
The Lantern Festival, traditionally marking the end of the Spring Festival period, is a time for family reunion. In the 300-year-old Pianyan Ancient Town inn Chongqing, a series of traditional celebrations were held to welcome the overseas Chinese contingent.
The highlight activity of the celebration was Pianyan's signature ‘Long Street Banquet’, where ancient streets are transformed in to a hundred-meter-long open-air "dining hall," showcasing the local "Ning Big Bowls" traditional festive meal.
"I came back to Chongqing and visited Pianyan Ancient Town to celebrate the Chinese New Year today, and it really has that festive vibe. The Long Street Banquet here is something special. It is the first time I have seen it, and I am over 70! It is definitely a place full of Chinese New Year spirit," said Wu Jixin, a Chinese Canadian.
In addition to the feast, the overseas Chinese visitors gathered in the ancient town to take part in a variety of traditional cultural activities, including making tangyuan glutinous rice balls, a traditional Lantern Festival snack, as well as paper-cutting, leaf carving, and intangible heritage fabric arts.
"First of all, participating in this festival feels really special to us because it is something we have never experienced back in Malaysia. We got to make tangyuan, solve lantern riddles, and try paper-cutting, and it was so exciting for us," said Li Lianfeng, a Malaysian Chinese, who came to visit with her family.
During the Spring Festival period, folk activities in Pianyan Ancient Town attract around 10,000 visitors daily, with many overseas Chinese in attendance for the festive gathering and a chance to reconnect with traditional Chinese culture.
Overseas Chinese celebrate Lantern Festival in ancient town in Chongqing
Overseas Chinese celebrate Lantern Festival in ancient town in Chongqing
Seven of the eight major categories of commodities and services that make up China's consumer price index (CPI) have risen in March, said an analyst after the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released the latest data on Friday.
The latest data showed China's CPI, a main gauge of inflation, rose 1 percent year on year in March, and the core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, increased 1.1 percent year on year.
Among them, prices of industrial consumer goods grew by 2.2 percent, an increase of 1.1 percentage points from the previous month, contributing about 0.67 percentage points to the year-on-year CPI increase.
Specifically, the prices of gold jewelry, household appliances and clothing all went up, while gasoline prices turned from a decline to a rise.
"Of the eight major categories of commodities and services that make up the CPI, seven recorded price increases and one saw a decline, namely the residential category. Specifically, driven by strong seasonal demand, a rise in clothing prices pushed up the overall price of the apparel category year on year. The price of the transportation and communication category shifted from a decline to a year-on-year increase. Meanwhile, boosted by growing resident travel demand, prices for travel agency services also rose year on year," said He Xiaoying, deputy director at the analysis and forecasting division of the price monitoring center under the National Development and Reform Commission.
Friday's data also showed that the producer price index (PPI), which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, returned to year-on-year growth in March, ending a 41-month streak of decline.
The PPI rose 0.5 percent year on year in March, reversing a 0.9 percent drop in February, according to the NBS.
NBS statistician Dong Lijuan attributed the turnaround mainly to imported inflationary pressures and improved supply-demand dynamics in some domestic industries.
Peng Xiaozhen, an analyst at Sublime China Information Company Limited, an institute specializing in providing information on Chinese commodity market, said overall, China's PPI is set to recover.
"International energy markets experienced wide fluctuations, and rising costs pushed up prices across the entire petrochemical industrial chain. Boosted by higher energy and chemical product prices, the rebound trend of China's PPI was further consolidated and overall, its recovery is going to continue," said Peng.
Price hike of seven major categories drives China's CPI in March: analyst
