Last month marked the end of Hong Kong’s successful four-month inaugural annual Chinese Culture Festival. The flagship event, run by the Chinese Culture Promotion Office under the city’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD), was announced in April to promote Chinese culture and patriotic education, as well as enhance national identity among the people of Hong Kong.
The festival featured a diverse line-up of performances of Chinese stories and interpretations of classics in a range of genres, covering music, dance, Chinese opera and multi-arts, as well as film shows, exhibitions, talks and a carnival to highlight the heritage of traditional arts.
Ivy Ngai Suk-yee, chief manager of the department’s Cultural Presentations Section, which led the organisation of the festival, hailed the success of the event.
“We sold more than 80 per cent of our 65,000 tickets, which is a fantastic figure,” she said. “Feedback from our audience and artists has been very positive. If we look at our audience’s demographic, it’s quite evenly distributed among people aged under 30, 30 to 65 and over 65. It shows how diverse the audience is.”
The festival aims to enhance the public’s appreciation of Chinese culture, how it transcends time and can be accessible to all, and its synergy with the rest of the world.
In June, a free carnival named “Encountering Chinese Culture” was held at Sha Tin Town Hall and New Town Plaza, showcasing a range of stage performances and activities, including excerpt performances of dance, music and magic, inspiring cultural booths covering demonstrations of intangible cultural heritage of traditional craftsmanship such as Chinese paper-cutting, Hong Kong cheongsam making and Cantonese opera headdresses crafting, and a foyer concert of Chinese music, for all to experience the charm of Chinese culture and arts.
To attract younger audiences, the festival curated two initiatives for students, the “Chinese Culture for All: A Special Performance Series” and “Chinese Opera en Route to Campus” – which included tours and mobile exhibitions during visits to 10 schools – to give them insights and exclusive behind-the-scenes glimpses of how the industry works.
Students were able to attend open rehearsals and special performances of productions including Chinese Opera Festival programmes by the Academy of Xinzhou Studies and Centre for the Safeguarding of Liuzi Opera of Shandong; Mulan, a dance drama about a young Chinese woman who, disguised as a man, replaces her aged father in the army, by Ningbo Performance & Arts Group; and Ma Xianglan, a new Cantonese opera by Hong Kong Xiqu Troupe.
“The festival has changed my understanding of Chinese culture,” said Chan Cheuk-hei, a student at Kwun Tong Government Secondary School, who saw the open rehearsal of Mulan. “When I thought of Chinese culture before, I always assumed it was mostly about ‘music, chess, calligraphy and painting’ [the four traditional pillars of Chinese arts].
“Now, I know it is much more diverse, including dances, martial arts and other types of performances. The festival has piqued my interest in Chinese culture even more.”
Hsu Sze-nga, Chan’s schoolmate, who also watched the open rehearsal, said: “Students like us don’t often get many chances to learn about these traditional Chinese arts on social media, such as Instagram. So the Chinese Culture Festival is a great platform for us to learn about things we don’t usually see.
“Chinese culture has lasted for thousands of years. It’d be a shame if it gets lost and forgotten by our generation. We should be passing down this great heritage to the next generation.”
Students were also given behind-the-scenes glimpses of another production highlighting China’s rich dance heritage, Beijing Dance Drama and Opera’s award-winning Five Stars Rising in the East, which got the festival under way.
The show was inspired by the 1995 discovery of a beautifully preserved, centuries-old brocade at Xinjiang’s ancient Niya ruins. Combining distinctive characters, punchy plotlines and plenty of humour, it fused traditional aesthetics from the Han dynasty (206BC-220AD) with innovative contemporary dance elements, such as tap dancing, to deliver an uplifting message that all ethnic groups can exist in harmony.
In April, well ahead of the show’s performances at the festival’s opening in June, members of the production had hosted an exchange-sharing session for more than 60 students and teachers from the School of Dance of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.
Wang Ge, the show’s chief director, had shared his insights about staging the show, while four dancers and actors from the cast gave demonstrations, including dancing with the students.
Insights about another feature of China’s rich musical heritage, drumming, were also provided during the festival by members of the Drum Music Art Ensemble of Jiangzhou, from Shanxi province. They performed a concert in July with enthralled local performers, who had earlier visited Jiangzhou to learn about the traditional art form.
The 12th edition of the annual Chinese Opera Festival was made a core part of this year’s inaugural culture festival. Highlights featured 10 meet-the-artists sessions, talks on the culture of Chinese opera and masterclasses on the art of northern Kunqu opera, illustrated by extracts from The Story of the Jade Hairpin and To the Banquet Armed. A demonstration performance of Peking opera was also staged in August.
Yolanda Ngai Chi-yin, senior manager of the Theatre and Chinese Opera of the Cultural Presentations Section at the LCSD, who oversees the Chinese Opera Festival, said the new Chinese Culture Festival provides a great opportunity to broaden the scope of existing Chinese opera programmes and the art form’s appeal among audiences.
One of the highlights during this year’s festival was when Zhejiang Wu Opera Research Centre performed its new production, Sun Wu Kong Thrice Beat the Bony Demon, she said.
“It wasn’t the first time Zhejiang Wu Opera Research Centre has been to Hong Kong,” she said. “Throughout the years, they’ve gathered quite a devoted following … so tickets sold out quickly.
“During this year’s performance, the female protagonist injured her leg after a difficult back somersault only five minutes into the show. With tears streaming down her face offstage, she insisted on finishing the whole performance. This shows how much she, and other Chinese performing groups, respect and treasure Hong Kong audiences.”
Another highlight was the Cantonese opera version of the classic French play, Cyrano de Bergerac, about a talented nobleman and army cadet who is too self-conscious about his large nose to express his love for Princess Xu Qishan (Roxane in the original play), his beautiful and intellectual distant cousin.
The reimagined story’s witty and poignant love story, which was written and directed by renowned Cantonese opera virtuoso Law Ka-ying, transported the audience to the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Law and his wife, Liza Wang, an acclaimed television actress and performing artist, said the production aims to show that Cantonese opera is a versatile art form capable of expressing ideas from different cultures and different times.
The inaugural Chinese Culture Festival put Shanghai’s rich cultural history in the spotlight after selecting the city as its first designated “City in Focus”, which included the staging of Shanghai Culture Week to enable members of the public and visitors to appreciate and experience the unique charm of Shanghai’s culture and to foster cultural exchanges.
Gifted maestros from the city presented a range of shows and productions during the festival, including the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra performing its “New Oriental Chinese Music Scene” concert, featuring music by a range of different composers, under the baton of acclaimed conductor Tang Muhai.
The festival also invited people to explore a famous symbolic motif in Chinese culture – the dragon or loong – by staging an exhibition and series of talks.
The “Loong Legacies: Arts, Design & IP Product Exhibition and Talks” featured a display of loong-themed artworks including paintings, photography, visual arts, music and moving images, with artists reinterpreting and remodelling the loong symbol into different art forms.
Four themed talks were organised to delve into Chinese culture, its traditions and its transformation in the contemporary context.
Ivy Ngai said she hoped the annual culture festival would continue to help Hong Kong people to learn more about their rich cultural background and to cultivate a strong sense of nationhood and national identity, so they would become more intrigued and proud of their culture. “It is then that they will be interested in passing on the legacy and developing this cultural heritage,” she said.
