Thousands of professional and amateur "snappers" have been
zooming in on the first China Qinghai Sanjiangyuan International Photography Festival
which concluded in Xining, capital city of Qinghai Province, on Wednesday.
Photographers from home and abroad participated in the event
which provides a showcase for the landscapes and people of the
Sanjiangyuan area. The region holds the roots of the Yellow,
Lancang and Yangtze rivers.
The festival which got underway on July 29 was jointly organized
by the State Council Information Office, the China Photographers
Association and the Qinghai provincial government. It also provides
a new platform to introduce the attractions of Sanjiangyuan and the
Qinghai people to China and the rest of the world.?
Of the professionals invited to the festival, some 400 are from
China including wildlife photographer Xi Zhinong and 35 foreign
masters of photography including Dlana Bloomfield from the US, the
UK's Nilu Lzadi and Frenchman William Bestsch.
The organizers received a total of 150 features and individual
galleries with more than 20,000 pictures from photographers seeking
to participate in the festival's exhibition. All together 5,000
pictures in 84 features, 64 being Chinese and 20 from abroad, were
displayed during the five-day event.
Apart from features by the big names, the festival also
comprised DV movies, a high-level forum on camera techniques and
ecological cultural construction as well as a trade fair for
photographic equipment.
According to Xu Hao, deputy director of Qinghai Tourism Bureau,
the province has made great efforts to establish "trademark routes"
in association with the photographs.
"In June this year we sent over 20 travel agencies to Beijing,
Taiyuan, Yinchuan and other cities to promote our area and the
festival," Xu said. "So far over 6,000 tourists and amateur
photographers have been drawn to Qinghai and tourism has always
been closely connected with photography."
(China.org.cn by staff reporter Li Xiao, August 3, 2006)
