Celebrating International Day of Families Together • Beijing 2019

Hi, everyone! This is Guangming Live. May 15th marks the International Day of Families. In December 1989, The General Assembly proclaimed The International Year of the Family. In 1993, the General Assembly decided in a resolution that 15 May of every year should be observed as The International Day of Families. This day provides an opportunity to promote awareness of issues relating to families and to increase the knowledge of the social, economic and demographic processes affecting families.

In this year, the annual event Celebrating International Day of Families Together • Beijing is jointly held by Beijing Women’s Federation and the Foreign Affairs Office of the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality in Shougang Park. And its theme is “Sharing Families Gathering, Supporting Winter Olympics”. Representative families of foreign envoys in China and Chinese families are invited to gather here to experience various activities like winter sports, traditional Chinese culture activity and families’ theme exhibition.

Now, let’s take a look at the opening ceremony at first.

Very impressive opening ceremony! There are also families activities like winter sports and some cultural activities about traditional Chinese culture. Let’s take a close look.

Now I’m at the interactive area of Entertaining Parent-Child Winter Sports. There are seven experience areas here: Dryland Skiing, Human Curling, Turtle and Rabbit Bobsleigh Race, Defending Field, Shooting War, Dryland Curling, and Ice Cuqiu. Let’s take a close look.

Dryland Skiing: Three family members should wear a ski board. The family that run the fastest win the game.

Human Curling: Children are taken as the curlings who will be thrown by their parents to the house, and the child who is in the nearest palce of the house wins.

Turtle and Rabbit Bobsleigh Race: Three family members take a turtle or rabbit bobsleigh run to the finishing line. And the fastest one wins.

Shooting War: Children should hold the ice hockey stick and kick the ball into the goal. There are several difficulty levels. Each hole has different marks. And every family has five chances to kick the ball.

Ice soccer: There are two teams: red team and blue team. Players should kick the ball to the house area, and places where balls stop have different marks. Every team has four chances.

Dryland Curling: Each can experience the curling sports to get close to the real curling competiton. But it’s much easier than real curling competition.

Defending Field: There are two teams: black team and white team. Everyone has only one chance to move one ball, and any team who first form a line of ball win the game.

On the right side of the stage is the Achievements Exhibition Area of the Beijing Women’s Federation set up to showcase the outstanding performance in the field of family in recent years. As we can see, there are Dough Figurine, Theme Painting, Paper-cut for Window Decoration and Sugar Painting among other traditional Chinese craft activities.

Master Ma Hongli learnt the traditional culture and skills of the dough modeling from Wang Yan who is the second-generation inheritor of the Beijing Cao School Dough Modeling. Her works are very exquisite and vivid, one of which has been collected by the Embassy of the Kingdom of Morocco to China.

Over past years, she accompanied with her team has made efforts to promote the development of folk craftsmanship in various areas from streets, community, schools and companies, contributing to the international and domestic exchanges on folk craftsmanship. Children are learning how to make the dough models of winter sports. Wow, their works also looks very good.

Master Song learnt paper cutting from Bai Xiu’e who is the national-level inheritor of intangible culture heritage. Song is good at designing patterns of various themes on folk customs of traditional Chinese culture. She creates works of animals, flowers, grasses and figures with the scissor and colorful paper. She also has learnt traditional Chinese painting and seal cutting from Master Wang Chunlin. Children are learning paper cutting and they are cutting snowflakes and snow figures.

Master Qian is the head of the Shijingshan Distric Smart Lady Federation and Smart Lady Studio as well as the inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage Bo Embroidery. She has applied for a patent of the unique stitching method. From her works, we can see her solid foundation of panting. This Pine Tree on Lushan Mountain is her representative work in the early period. Her works Love wins the first prize, and Dragon and Phoenix win the gold prize.

It’s time to say goodbye. Thanks for watching. Have a happy International Day of Families. Bye Bye!