Celebrations to mark the Duanwu Festival (Dragon Boat Festival) have been held with a blend of traditional and modern spectacles, featuring dragon boat races and folk performances, in Anju Ancient Town in Tongliang, the homeland of the dragon, in the southwestern Chinese municipality of Chongqing.
The Duanwu Festival is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month on the Chinese lunar calendar. This year, it fell on June 19.
Traditional dragon boat races remain essential to the celebrations. At the sound of the starting whistle, rowers paddle vigorously toward the finish line amid cheering crowds. The races have inspired another competition, known as the duck-catching contest, where firecrackers signal a race to catch ducks thrown into the water as the leading dragon boat approaches.
"Everyone has his own job on weekdays, but we make time to keep training. We're not doing it for rankings -- merely to carry on the Anju dragon boat tradition," said Tao Kangyong, a member of the dragon boat team.
In addition, other performances were also staged, including stunts featuring a dragon dance, jet skis, and powered paragliders. Drones were used to make several lifelike dragons fly gracefully in the sky, creating a spectacular visual feast.
"The experience was fantastic. There is a strong festive atmosphere. I truly felt the charm of the traditional culture of the Dragon Boat Festival," said Zhou Li, a tourist.
As night falls, the ancient town treats visitors to a dazzling array of folk performances.
Chongqing lures visitors with traditional, modern spectacles in Duanwu Festival
China's steel industry has achieved intensive breakthroughs in high-end precision materials since the beginning of this year, with a batch of advanced specialty steels empowering frontier industries including electronics, new energy and high-end equipment.
In the mobile communication era of 4G, the thickness required for an ultra-thin low-carbon steel foil is 0.12 mm to enable convenient and speedy signal transmission.
Such a demanding requirement is tightened to a mere 0.10 mm in today's 5G new era, which means more complicated techniques for its manufacturers.
For a long time, the rolling methods relied heavily on foreign enterprises. However, Shougang Group teamed up with the University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB) in 2013 to conduct scientific research and development on the continuous rolling process of "5G steel," a nickname of the ultra-thin low-carbon steel foil.
The "5G steel" that independently developed by China - as thin as 0.07 mm - has entered mass production and been widely used for 5G base station signal receivers, signal transmission filters, and integrated circuit boards, and new energy battery connection pieces.
"Although it's thin, it has excellent toughness and feels like paper, and we can easily bend it and repeatedly fold it," said Hu Na, an engineer at Shougang Jingtang Steel United Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. She folded the steel into a classic "paper plane" to show its flexibility.
This year, China has been using specialty steels to empower the development of new quality productive forces.
For instance, in industrial sector, China has continued to push performance limits of silicon steel -- an iron-silicon alloy used primarily in electrical applications due to its good magnetic properties, with 0.1-millimeter-grade non-oriented electrical steel achieving global top-tier status in electrical steel iron loss indicators.
The material now is widely used in drive motors for new energy vehicles and joint motors for humanoid robots.
The breakthroughs came as China's steel industry continues to shift toward higher value-added products, with the manufacturing sector's share of steel consumption surpassing that of the construction sector for the first time in 2025.
China makes intensive breakthroughs in high-end steel products in 2026
