The First Yantai Citizen Cultural Festival began on March 30, aiming to showcase the area's diverse local culture through a variety of performances and demonstrations.

The festival, the first of its kind in Yantai, set up one main venue at the city's cultural center square and 15 sub-venues in the city's 15 counties and districts. It will stage more than 10,000 distinctive cultural performances.

The festival involves four parts – "sound of spring", "dance of summer", "rhythm of autumn" and "joys of winter". Each part individually boasts more than 1,000 cultural performances and includes a wide array of dances and songs.

Modern dramas and Chinese zither performances will be featured as well. A drama, Sentry Under the Neon Lights, will be played to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.

Several traditional art forms will be demonstrated, including Yantai paper-cutting, clay figurines, dough modeling and woolen embroidery. Practitioners of the crafts will perform on-site at the Yantai Cultural Center.

The festival aims to accentuate the city's cultural richness and accelerate the high-quality development of cultural and tourism services. The Yantai government has pledged to host the event every year in order to turn Yantai into a well-known cultural brand across China, according to Yu Yongxin, director of the Yantai publicity department.