China’s Yichang city advocates traditional culture

KUALA LUMPUR: Yichang — a city in central China’s Hubei Province — famed for historic figures, largest hydro-power station in the world, pianos and poetry is now thriving on its rich traditional culture.

The state council, China’s cabinet has proposed in the 2018 government work report in February to advocate excellent traditional culture of the Chinese nation and build a prosperous cultural society with Chinese characteristics.

Yichang Municipal Government in a statement said there over 150 distinctive activities at grassroots level was held in Yichang.

The city government also invested more than 10 billion yuan ( US$ 1.6 billion) ( RM 6.42 billion) in major cultural infrastructure.

Yichang is also home to 15 poetry research and creation teams with 39 poetry societies as over 80 large- scale poetry activities are held every year with 100,000 participants from local communities and over 400,000 residents participated in various kinds of poetry activities in the city last year.

The city also held the China’s traditional Dragon Boat Festival on June 18 — a grand dragon boat competition in Yichang’s Zigui County.

The county government of Zigui recently brought a folk melodrama based on ancient Chinese poet, Qu Yuan to Beijing and presented citizens in the Chinese capital an original cultural feast.

Previously, the Zigui Quyuan art troupe consisting of 23 artists flew to Canada to perform and it was the first time for a county-level troupe to attend an art festival in a foreign country. — Bernama