Prof. Weise attends the 2024 Hefei City Spring Festival Celebration [合肥市春节团拜会]

: Written by: Thomas Weise; Created: 06 February 2024

Today, on 2024-02-06, I had the great honor of being invited to take part in the Spring Festival celebration [春节团拜会] of our city Hefei [合肥市]. In this event, in which I also took part in 2018 and 2020, people from literally all walks and stages of life take part to celebrate the new year. On my table alone, there were seated a religious man, a member of an ethnic minority, politicians, a policeman, a school principal, businessmen, a fire fighter, a scientist, a model worker, a driver, and me, if I remember correctly. There were 55 tables, so the event represented a very broad spectrum of the Chinese society coming together.

The meeting, presided by the Major of Hefei, Mr. Yunfeng LUO [市长罗云峰] started with a warm welcome speech of the Party Secretary of our City, Mr. Aihua YU [市委书记虞爱华], who emphasized that achievements of our city in the past years. After this inspiring introduction, the actual celebration program started with an opening group dance performed by the Anhui Women and Children's Activity Center of Hefei Song and Dance Troupe [合肥市歌舞团安徽省妇女儿童活动中心]. While the dance was very nice, I especially liked the endearing and impressive performance of the children. The dance was followed by a comedic act by the Hefei Quyi Troupe [合肥市曲艺团] — while my Chinese is insufficient to understand the comedic nuances, I did enjoy the bit on how everybody is taking photos and selfies all the time — and did make photos of it, of course. I could not agree more with third performance, the song "Hefei Invites You" [合肥请您来] presented by Xiaojie GU [顾小洁] and the Hefei Song and Dance Troupe [合肥市歌舞团]. Then, the team of the Lujiang County Cultural Museum [庐江县文化馆] gave their cultural heritage-based presentation "闹花船," which does not translate well to English, but which was indeed very nice. While it certainly represented a very traditional Chinese art, it did not feel dated at all. Maybe the presenters did combine it with modern elements and updated it, or maybe I am just too uncultured to realize that traditional opera-ish presentations never feel dated anyway — but I did really like it. Even more modern was the presentation of the Hefei Song and Dance Troupe [合肥市歌舞团] who used traditional folk music instruments to play their very catchy song "春风堆绣图" whose title again does not translate very well to English. This was followed by an incredibly impressive physical performance, the "Shoulder Ballet" [肩上芭蕾] by Wentong Yang [杨文通] and Wanxia Tan [谭婉霞] of the Linquan County Hero Acrobatic Art School [临泉县豪杰杂技艺术学校]. All acts of this afternoon were incredible, with perfect craftsmanship, choreographies, tunes, timing, and you could just feel the countless hours, days, and years of practice and work that all the artists put into their, well, art. Nevertheless, if I had to pick a favorite, then it might would be the opera performances, Lu Opera "Looking at the Appearance" [庐剧《瞧相》] and Huangmei Opera "Making Flower Lanterns" [黄梅戏《闹花灯》]. Finally, the great show ended with the song and dance "Spring Blossoms" by Yunlong Zhuang [庄云龙] and Niangnian Wang [王思念] with the Hefei Song and Dance Troupe [合肥市歌舞团], again an outstanding performance.