On May 19, a folk culture feast kicked off warmly in Beidouxi Town, Xupu County, Huaihua. Centering on enriching rural areas with art and facilitating cultural exchanges between towns and regions, distinctive cultural events were successfully held. Leveraging the National Public Cultural Service Publicity Week, the activities have bolstered the development strategy of the Grand Zhangjiajie International Tourism Zone across Hunan. Serving as a cultural bond, they inject vitality into rural revitalization and cultural-tourism integration, and showcase the new demeanor and responsibility of Huaihua’cultural center.
Guided by Hunan Provincial Culture Museum and Huaihua Bureau of Culture, Tourism, Radio, Film, Television and Sports, the event was jointly hosted by Huaihua Culture Museum and the cultural and tourism authorities of Xupu, Huitong and Chenxi counties.The venue was chosen for Beidouxi Town of Xupu County thanks to its geographical advantage as a tourist gem of the Xuefeng Mountains and its driving influence as an eco-cultural destination. It aligns perfectly with the strategic plan that incorporates all 13 county-level administrative regions of Huaihua into the Grand Zhangjiajie International Tourism Zone.
Mountains and rivers preserve cultural heritage, while art warms rural land.Yang Zhiqing, curator of Huaihua Culture Museum, stated that the core of the cultural interaction campaign lies in institutional innovation. Led by the municipal museum, the event unites cultural institutions across districts and counties to build a talent pool covering high-quality cultural resources, performers, local talents and rural live streamers among neighboring towns and townships. Regular joint training on planning, creation and digital technology is delivered. Targeted interactive exchanges encourage cultural exchanges between adjacent areas. The initiative breaks geographical boundaries to realize restructuring, co-construction and sharing of cultural resources. It cuts service costs and avoids homogeneous competition to boost overall cultural efficiency, fostering a vibrant rural cultural revitalization featuring joint development, shared beauty and benefits, multi-dimensional empowerment and interactive prosperity.
The launching ceremony vividly embodied the essence of cultural interaction through diverse artistic performances. Huaihua Culture Museum, Municipal Peking Opera Association and Municipal Language Art Association presented wonderful shows including Unity Under One Nation, Red Classics Passed Down Through Generations and Beidouxi Quartet.Cultural centers of neighboring Chenxi, Huitong and Xupu counties staged distinctive local performances such as Chenhe string music, chorus Misty Hunan Waters and Mountains and folk dance Joyful Yao Village. Artists from municipal, county and township levels shared the same stage, enriching artistic content and diversifying performance forms, blazing a new trail for beautifying villages with culture and art.
It is reported that during the Public Cultural Service Publicity Week, cultural institutions across Huaihua held 78 public-benefit activities in total. Led by the municipal culture museum, 13 distinctive events were launched, including this very event, mobile aesthetic education courses covering seven sectors, exhibitions of outstanding works from the Hundred-Village Influencer Project, and AI-aided creation of songs and dances featuring ancient villages.
In recent years, Huaihua Culture Museum has taken proactive action, organizing over a thousand cultural activities. It has built influential provincial and national cultural brands such as Huaihua Stage Shows and Hundred-Village Influencer Project. Having won numerous national and provincial honors, it has yielded remarkable social benefits in serving grassroots communities and empowering rural development.
(Translated by Dong Yue)