A sports feast is going on in Beijing, the host city of the 29th Olympic Games, but visitors shouldn't miss the cultural feast staged outside the venues.
Visitors can get glimpses of Chinese culture at the Olympic Green in northern Beijing, where 30 some small cabins have been set up to showcase the intangible cultural heritage of different regions.
The show at the Olympic park received about 50,000 visitors, including event spectators and citizens with free tickets, every day over the past few days, the Beijing News reported on Friday, citing volunteers at the Olympic Green central zone.
The show is open to athletes, officials and journalists attending the Games. "Spectators can visit for free with venue tickets on the day of the event," said Kan Ke, Deputy Director of the Games' Cultural Activities Department.
In addition, about 10,000 free tickets are distributed every day to Beijing residents.
Visitors are expected to hit 100,000 on Friday, when the track and field competition starts at the National Stadium, located in the Olympic Green, according to an unidentified volunteer quoted in the newspaper.
The volunteer also said distribution of free tickets would be cut for safety concerns if more event spectators are expected.
The most popular cabin, that of Beijing, featuring imperial settings of the Qing Dynasty palace and folk handiwork, attracted nearly 20,000 visitors on Thursday, several thousand more than the previous day, according to one of the staff.
About 12,000 visitors had visited the Shanghai cabin by 6 p.m., a man in charge of that exhibition told the Beijing News. "It has almost reached the maximum number of visitors we can host."
The Shanghai show surprised visitors by mainly displaying ethnic musical instruments, instead of the city's modern faces.
The goal is to give visitors at least one lasting memory for each region, organizers said. The cabin show is called "China Story".
"Cabins of every province and region are crowded," the man from the Shanghai cabin said. "The exhibition of China's intangible heritage is quite a cultural feast for visitors from all around the world."
The cabins are draped in white cloth, with peaked blue and yellow roofs that signify "the auspicious cloud", so all the cabins are called Xiang Yun (meaning auspicious clouds in Chinese) cabins.
Organizers said exhibitions at the cabins are not meant to be totally representative of Chinese culture, but the small-scale show is selective and excellent.
In addition to the cabins, there is an afternoon parade with shows of aerobics and hip-hop dances, and an evening play that includes singing, dancing and acrobatics. Both were widely welcomed.
"We have been practicing for a month under intense heat, wearing this skirt weighing more than five kilograms," said Xiao Li, a performer in the parade show. "But when I saw the enthusiastic crowd following us, I knew it was totally worthwhile."
Eight phalanxes and 183 professional performers took part in the parade.
The theater show, staged between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. every day, also invites some of the country's pop stars for an audience of about 6,000.
The newspaper said the surge of the audience in recent days had forced organizers to keep visitors without a ticket or invitation away from the shows.
Organizers provide free shuttle services in the park for seniors, the disabled and pregnant women, who can hitch a ride anywhere on the route.
(Xinhua News Agency August 15, 2008)