Grand Spring Festival Parade lights up Dubai’s Expo City

A grand parade celebrating the Chinese Spring Festival took place on Sunday at Expo City in Dubai, featuring traditional Chinese folk dances including the Yingge or Hero's Song Dance, dragon and lion dances, and hi-tech displays including dancing robots and self-driving cars.

The parade included representatives from all seven emirates which make up the United Arab Emirates, adding a special touch to the lively performances.

Alongside the parade, a special Spring Festival bazaar was set up, showcasing a variety of delicious Chinese cuisine and offering intangible cultural experiences such as paper cutting and calligraphy. Meanwhile, a range of Chinese tech showcases captured public attention, with crowds gathering to take photos as robots showed off their capabilities.

"We have a saying that technology enhances culture. As we all know, we have wonderful traditional cultures, and our contemporary arts are also remarkable. To make these cultures more appealing, especially to young people, we need to use some technological means to empower them, so they can attract more people to experience them," said Ou Boqian, the Chinese Consul General in Dubai.

During the event, promotional videos for China Media Group's (CMG) 2026 Spring Festival Gala, as well as the short film promoting the "China Travel with Chinese Films" initiative were screened on a loop. The festive and joyful visuals, along with the engaging audiovisual presentation, drew many guests to stop and watch.

Meanwhile, a CMG pavilion was open to visitors, showcasing the content and program selections for the Spring Festival Gala, as well as a variety of the media group’s cultural and creative products. A member of the Dubai royal family visited the pavilion and was briefed on the content and program selections for the Gala.

Hoda Ara, a visitor from Egypt, said that the Spring Festival was the part of Chinese culture that fascinates her the most.

"Spring Festival holds deep tradition in it, but it still can bring a lot like like what we see today, a lot of joy and a lot of beautiful energy to people from different backgrounds," she said.

The Spring festival will fall on Feb 17 this year, ushering in the Year of the Horse, the seventh of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac.

Grand Spring Festival Parade lights up Dubai’s Expo City

Global food commodity prices climbed for a second consecutive month in March, driven mainly by higher energy costs linked to escalating conflict in the Middle East, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said in report released on Friday.

The FAO Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of globally traded food commodities, averaged 128.5 points in March, up 2.4 percent from February and 1.0 percent above its level a year ago.

According to the report, the FAO Vegetable Oil Index and Sugar Price Index showed the largest increases, up 5.1 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively.

The FAO Cereal Price Index increased by 1.5 percent from the previous month, driven primarily by higher world wheat prices, which rose 4.3 percent.

The FAO Meat Price Index rose by 1.0 percent from the previous month, and the FAO All-Rice Price Index declined by 3.0 percent in March, according to the report.

FAO stated that rising energy and fertilizer prices have been driving up agricultural input costs.

If the conflict stretches beyond 40 days, farmers will have to choose to farm the same with fewer inputs, plant less, or switch to less intensive fertilizer crops, according to FAO Chief Economist Maximo Torero.

These choices will hit future yields and shape food supply and commodity prices for the rest of this year and beyond, Torero said.

Global food prices rise for 2nd consecutive month in March amid Middle East conflict: FAO