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.