A grand show of Peking Opera, dance, symphonic music and
acrobatics by some 300 Chinese artists from eight performance
troupes raised the curtain of the Chinese Cultural Festival at the
Kremlin last night.
Residents in other parts of Russia will also have the chance to
attend many of the cultural activities, as a troupe of folk
musicians, martial artists, acrobats, tea ceremony artists and
dancers will tour cities along the Volga River, performing and
holding exhibitions in central plazas and theaters.
"We are going to present an ancient, modern and splendid China,"
Meng Xiaosi, vice-minister of culture, told reporters.
A group of Chinese painters will join the year-long festival,
depicting the scenery along the Volga River; and their works will
be gifted to Russian art galleries.
Other exhibitions of traditional and modern Chinese art will
also tour 30 cities including St Petersburg in the west and
Yekaterinburg in the east.
Besides a porcelain exhibition at Tretiakov Gallery, other shows
include statues of Buddha, Chinese paintings after the 1970s and
modern decoration art.
China's Silk over 5,000 Years, an exhibition of the country's
silk culture at the Russian Historical Museum, will mark the
closing of the festival.
Moviegoers will have a visual feast around September, when four
theme festivals will be staged: A retrospective of classic Chinese
films, a Shanghai film week during the Moscow International Film
Festival, an exhibition of the works of young Chinese directors and
a series of contemporary Chinese films.
Various cultural exchanges among the two nations' ordinary
people will also be held.
Three concerts by young art college teachers from both countries
will be held in the latter half of the year, while China's art
talents will exchange their ideas on art education with their
counterparts in Russian art institutes.
A Chinese language contest among Russian college students will
start in October, with the 40 finalists getting a chance to study
in China.
"Russians' impression of China, which they used to consider
exotic and mysterious, is now changing to a land of dynamism."
"That's what I felt during my one-year stay in Russia," said Lu
Yali, a teacher at the Beijing Dance Academy, who studied at the
National Moscow Dance Academy from 2003 to 2004.
(China Daily March 27, 2007)
