Cultural festivals will run throughout the year of 2004 involving every genre of the performing arts, with Chinese artists traveling abroad and international artists coming to China to show off their attainments.

The performance galas will start with a Beijing Festival in Paris from January 22 to 30.

A part of the Year of China in France, the week-long event will feature performances, exhibitions and a trade fair as well, to offer Parisians an overall cultural and economic image of the capital city of China.

During the week, thousands of Chinese red lanterns will be hung along the Champs Elysees.

The festival will reach its climax on January 24. Starting at 2 in the afternoon, Paris time, some 720 Beijingers will stage a gala parade of traditional dancing, a dragon dance, lion dance, martial arts, acrobatics, a puppet show and Peking Opera on the famous Paris boulevard.

When evening falls, the Eiffel Tower is scheduled to be lit up with red laser beams set up on the ground around it. Red is the color symbolizing China.

In early summer, Beijingers can expect to see a variety of performances from some nine art troupes from Africa. The shows are a follow-up to the 2003 China-Africa Co-operation Forum, and several African performing art troupes, at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture, will be the main guests from the continent during the 2004 Meet In Beijing Arts Festival in May.

The nine performing art troupes plus three exhibitions will come from Mauritius, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Egypt and Botswana.

In exchange, three performing troupes, in song and dance, martial arts and acrobatics, and an exhibition of Chinese arts and crafts will tour about 15 African countries, including South Africa, Ghana and Gabon, in July and August.

Besides the regular annual events, including the Hong Kong Arts Festival in February and March, the Beijing Music Festival in October and the Shanghai International Arts Festival in October and November, other cultural exchange programs include:

A cultural team consisting of more than 100 artists from both Chinese mainland and Taiwan will tour Shangri-La in Southwest China's Yunnan Province in June.

The sixth China Culture Center Abroad will open in Seoul in July. The previous five were in Mauritius (1988), Benin (1988), Cairo (2002), Paris (2002) and Malta (2003).

The center's main mission is to introduce Chinese culture. The center will offer regular art exhibitions, movies, book fairs and courses in Chinese language, calligraphy, paintings and cuisine.

The Ministry of Culture will launch a Gezaixi Opera Festival in Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province in October. Gezaixi is an old form of folk opera popular in Fujian and Taiwan. Four troupes from Taiwan will be invited to the festival and forum as well.

A multilateral forum on International Culture Rules will be held in Shanghai in November.

A series of celebrations will be held to mark the fifth anniversary of Macao's return to China in November.

(China Daily January 5, 2004)