The Spring Festival Cultural Temple Fair, which has been held for six consecutive sessions, has attracted more than 70,000 tourists to celebrate the Spring Festival this year, making the 2019 Spring Festival have a new flavor and a sense of the times.
Inheriting Sound Family Traditions, Promoting New Fashion
This year, Confucius Academy has “deconstructed” the Book of Family Names and made a “totem wall of Family Names” through the combination with totem elements. With narrators’ live explanations, it attracted numerous tourists to take photos, and let them enjoy the Chinese aesthetic spirits in tracing origins of their family names.
The “Homecoming and local Accent Recitation” activity, with nostalgia as its theme, has become the hottest activity of this year. The recitation encourages audiences to recite stories in their own dialect, so as to express their homesickness. From February 5 (the first day of the lunar month) to February 10 (the sixth day of the lunar month), there are local dialects worldwide, expressing the nostalgia and family-country feelings at Confucius Academy every day.
The Temple Fair has also welcomed 18 representatives of moral models and nice persons in Guiyang to congratulate the Spring Festival to the tourists. The moral model is not only an honor but also a mission. They should not forget the original intention and sow the seeds of worship of the virtue and doing good things and knowing courtesy and shame, as Confucius said, into society.
Excavating Good Voices, Culture Facilitates Poverty Alleviation
A farmer performance team from the Tang’an Dongzhai of Zhaoxing Township was invited for the Temple Fair. With their handmade musical instruments, as well as daily ploughs and hoes as props, they provided the most authentic performance of Don Nationality to citizens and tourists.
In 1999, the only one Dong Nationality Eco-Museum in China, jointly constructed and protected by China and Norway, was settled at Tang’an Dongzhai. Today, the villagers hope to make the brand through their singing. At the Temple Fair, Lu Yuegang, director of the Tang’an performance team, said excitedly, “This is a live advertisement for Tang’an!”
Confucius Academy boosted spirits of people in impoverished mountainous areas through cultural assistance, and also sent New Year scrolls which are necessary for Chinese people, to millions of families. Before the Spring Festival, Guiyang Confucius Academy launched the activity of “New Year Scrolls Celebrate the Spring Festival and Bring ‘Fu’(meaning blessing and good fortune) back Home”, inviting 20 famous calligraphers within the province to write more than ten thousand pairs of New Year scrolls and Chinese character “福” (Fu)for tourists at Confucius Academy and Longdongbao Airport. The scrolls have become “luggage” bearing the deepest cultural connotations on their way home.
Creating New Customs for Spring Festival, Enjoying the “Cultural Year”
Since 2017, Confucius Academy has held the activities themed” Praying for Good Luck and Talents” for two consecutive sessions, which are extensively popular among citizens. This Spring Festival, with Confucian “Five Constants”—“benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and faith” ，it sets up five routes of breakthrough, so that people can meet good luck and “talents” in the fun of breakthrough. It has also created unique Guiyang New Customs for Spring Festival at Confucius Academy.
During the Temple Fair, “Our Festival”—the primary and secondary school students research and study experience trip, made by Confucius Academy Research and Study Base, opened a cultural feast for primary and secondary school students to appreciate “poetry, books, rituals and music” through activities such as praying for good luck and talents, enjoying interactive entertainments, challenging Chinese characters and experiencing four rituals at Confucius Academy.
The Spring Festival holiday is coming to an end, and the Spring Festival Cultural Temple Fair of Confucius Academy will enter the next phase. The staffs of Confucius Academy have begun to prepare for the sixth Lantern Festival tour.
