On April 2, the "Our Festival: Qingming" event, one of the series of "Handshake with the World·Listen to the Voices of Wenzhou", was held in Wenzhou Moral Museum. The event also attracted more than 10 international friends from Britain, Nepal, Zimbabwe and other countries. Listening to custom stories, learning paper-cutting, tasting green dumpling, making kites, reading ancient poems, visiting the moral museum...Every link of the event made the local Chinese and foreigners on the spot feel the cultural thickness of the Qingming solar term.

In order to let everyone better learn the Qingming culture, a folk culture exhibition area was set up at the open-pit of Wenzhou Moral Museum to demonstrate traditional paper-cutting, kite-making, green-dumpling-wrapping, etc., so that everyone can feel the traditional culture at fingertip, taste the Qingming delicacies. The present foreigners gathered around the stall to learn the custom. Bishinu from Nepal said: "I really like the part of folk custom experience. It allows me to experience the custom of Qingming, one of the 24 solar terms, at close range. It is of extraordinary significance."

Read ancient poems , learn the Qingming culture

On the second floor of the Wenzhou Moral Museum, a special Sino-foreign cultural exchange event - “Recitation of Poetry of Spring” was held. Sumayyha from Mauritius and Alex from the United Kingdom recited 1 Chinese ancient poem respectively. Craig from the United States recited English poems about spring (Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare). Sumayyha said, “It’s so special to experience the Qingming culture by reading poems. Chinese and Western cultures are intertwined, and the collision of Chinese and English bilingualism produces wonderful sparks. It’s really interesting!”
     

Foreigners’ wonderful cultural performances drew applause from the on-site personnel.

Bilingual video displays the visual Qingming

In order to show the traditional culture of Qingming more vividly, the Wenzhou Overseas Media Center specially led the foreign anchor Alex to shoot the bilingual video "Taste the Spring in the Green Grass: Green Dumpling". In order to fully present this traditional delicacy - Green dumpling (Qingming Bing), during the shooting process, Alex followed the film crew to Daluo Mountain to collect the ingredients - “miancai”, a local vegetables for making the green dumpling. Later, he came to Yangfushan Community, Binjiang Street, Lucheng District, worked with the staff, and experienced the whole process of making the green dumpling. Alex said that he likes Wenzhou’s food very much. Last year, he also launched a series of video programs "Eating all the delicacies in Wenzhou" with the film crew of the Wenzhou Overseas Media Center. Alex found the experience this time is particularly interesting because he starts from the ingredients, then to the making production, and finally to taste the finished product made by himself. He also planed to forward the video to overseas social media platforms to share with more people.

The sharing of Qingming online live broadcast

At the event site, a livestreaming area was set up. The foreign anchor Sumayyha (Mauritius) and Wenzhou folklore expert Jin Wenping shared the Qingming custom with the audience at home and abroad through the platforms as "Overseas Release"  of the Wenzhou Overseas Media Center and the “Lucheng in Palm” APP of Lucheng Media Center. Jin Wenping also introduced the slang and custom of the Qingming Festival. Sumayyha asked him why the Qingming Festival is also called the Hanshi Festival. She said in the livestreaming: "Unexpectedly, the Qingming Festival contains so much traditional cultural knowledge, and it reflects the depth of humanity and the thickness of history left in the traditions of the Chinese nation." 

Feel the warmth in good deeds

During the event, international friends followed the guide and visited Wenzhou Moral Museum and Wenzhou Pandemic Prevention Hall with great interest. During the visit, everyone felt the warmth of Wenzhou through vivid examples. "Seeing these moving deeds, I can't help thinking of my own experience of doing charity in Wenzhou. In my spare time, I have participated in the community's summer-tea delivery activities. I know, compared with the characters in these stories, what I did is very trivial. However, I still feel very happy that I can bring a little warmth to this great city." Precious, an international friend from Africa, exclaimed.

In the Pandemic Prevention Hall, the displayed photos recorded down in detail the strength of Wenzhou people fighting the pandemic and those touching moments happened during that arduous battle, writing the moving story of "the most beautiful retrograde". After listening to the stories behind these photos, Craig, a foreign friend, said that these photos conveyed Wenzhou people’s spirits of united together and fighting the pandemic, which is truly inspiring and moving.

According to the Wenzhou Overseas Media Center, in the next phase, more foreign anchors and overseas communicators will be organized to participate in the activities of checking out the charming Wenzhou. They will use their lens to record the beauty of Wenzhou in spring and share the beautiful Wenzhou to the people at home and abroad.