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Lishui village Spring Festival galas boost rural revitalization

chinadaily.com.cn| Updated : Jan 21, 2020 L M S

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The 2020 village Spring Festival gala in Qingyuan county in Lishui [Photo/Chinanews.com]

As the Spring Festival approaches, villagers in Xiaozhang in Jinyun county, Lishui in East China's Zhejiang province, are busy rehearsing for the 10th village Spring Festival gala on Jan 27.

Two hours, 17 performances and nearly 100 people will participate, making it the largest village Spring Festival gala in the history of Xiaozhang.

The Xiaozhang gala is one of hundreds of village Spring Festival galas in Lishui. Reports say that during this year's Spring Festival there will be nearly 1,000 village galas with local characteristics staged in Lishui.

In 1981, in the playground in a primary school in Jushui town in Lishui's Qingyuan county, a simple and crude gala took place, marking the beginning of the village Spring Festival gala tradition in Lishui.

Over the past 40 years, the Lishui Spring Festival gala have developed greatly, from 113 galas in 2013 to nearly 1,000 in 2020. Lishui has now established six demonstration counties for Spring Festival galas.

After years of systematic development, Lishui has formed a village Spring Festival gala brand with "one county one characteristic". For instance, in Jingning She autonomous county the gala highlights the distinctive characteristics of the traditional culture of the She ethnic group, and the Yunhe county gala focuses on intangible cultural heritages.

To build a hot tourism route is also an important part of the regular construction of Spring Festival village galas. At the end of 2019, Lishui had developed nine special tourism routes with the theme of spending Spring Festival in villages, and this has boosted the popularity of Lishui's integrated tourism.

The Lishui model is so popular that it has been replicated nationwide. The 2020 National Village Spring Festival Gala began on Jan 8, with villages in eight other provinces, including Anhui in East China, Sichuan in Southwest China and Henan in Central China, holding village Spring Festival galas to show off the latest developments in rural culture.