A three-day cross-border cultural exchange event celebrating the Spring Dragon Festival wrapped up on Sunday in Longzhou County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region bordering Vietnam, bringing together participants from both countries.
The Spring Dragon Festival, a traditional Chinese celebration, falls on the second day of the second month of the lunar calendar, and this year landed on Saturday. The festival marks the day when, according to folklore, the dragon raises its head, symbolizing prosperity and renewal.
The event kicked off on Friday with an opening ceremony one day later featuring performances from Chinese and Vietnamese delegations. Traditional music, folk fashion shows, and wedding customs took the center stage, offering a glimpse into the region's rich cultural heritage.
One of the highlights was a vibrant procession led by golden dragon figures, symbolizing a bountiful harvest. As the dragons paraded around grain granaries, participants followed in a lively celebration.
Visitors praised the festive dynamic atmosphere and immersive cultural experiences.
"It's bustling with excitement, and the cultural activities truly reflect the unique charm of the China-Vietnam border. The food here is also amazing, and we are having a great time," said a visitor.
An open-air fair drew large crowds, offering a variety of local specialties, including Longzhou's signature black sugar and Vietnamese coffee.
Xie Wenbo, head of the Longzhou County Bureau of Culture, Tourism, Sports, and Broadcasting, said that this year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relationship between China and Vietnam, as well as China-Vietnam Year of People-to-People Exchanges, emphasizing that the festival serves as a platform to celebrate shared traditions and strengthen cross-border ties.
"We have specially organized this intangible cultural heritage exhibition to highlight the deep cultural connection between our two nations," Xie said.
China, Vietnam celebrate Spring Dragon Festival, strengthen bilateral ties
Honor's humanoid robot, Lightning, which swept the 2026 Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon on Sunday, is a natural extension of years of accumulation in consumer electronics technology, said its developers.
A leading smart device provider in China, Honor independently developed the model, which dominated the podium at the event as it was used by all three teams whose autonomous navigating robots ran the fastest times.
At the Honor factory in Pingshan District in Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, where robotics engineers developed Lightning. They said the robot's body design incorporates a simulation system that, through artificial intelligence algorithms, can iterate nearly 30,000 design schemes of varying sizes over three months. Complete and mature systems are also in place for battery, communication, and reliability verification.
"We built a simulation lab from scratch. For the robots, we digitize the entire design and put it into a computer. We have our own material library, which can meet the force, thermal, and chemical property demands for each component, under different environments and speeds. We've accumulated about 1000 kinds of materials. For example, if there's a risk with the robot's neck, we just need to change the material code from 001 to 002. Now, through our simulations, we only need one day to perform parallel calculations on 10 different designs, before creating a mold and verifying it in the lab," said Li Zheng, a senior engineer at Honor.
An autonomous robot capable of completing a half-marathon involves a complete industry chain, with core components including high-precision sensors, LiDAR, motors, operating systems, and control algorithms. The development of robotic marathoners have driven an increasing number of component enterprises to get involved.
Manifold, a tech firm established by newly-graduated PhDs, has developed a 3D spatial memory module, which can model an environment in real time and transform it into images that robots can understand. They said several robots running the half-marathon this year adopted their solution.
"Our device can operate within a one-kilometer tunnel with an error margin of only tens of centimeters. For robots, especially in the absence of GPS, this allows them to accurately determine their location. The underlying technology is a multi-sensor fusion technology that we developed in-house," said Qin Youming, CEO and founder of Manifold.
The Beijing Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center set up a training camp for the marathon event. Many university students came a month ahead of the event to develop and debug their technologies and algorithms based on open-source robot bodies, databases, and training platforms.
"These high-quality databases and highly open-source control algorithms are actually very helpful to us. We no longer need to build the house from the ground up, but can skip the most basic part," said Sun Jingyu, a student from Shandong University.
"Through this racing event, I believe we can make our robots more reliable and stable, while also supporting high-dynamic, high-load movements. This is crucial for robots' future application in both industrial, commercial and domestic scenarios," said Guo Yijie, head of the innovative humanoid department and the Marathon project of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.
Engineers share development story behind Beijing humanoid half-marathon champion model
