CRI听力:Qingdao folk festival highlights international commodities

The Belt and Road initiative has opened the opportunities to a huge range of international products – ranging from food and drink, to mother and baby products and traditional handicrafts.

As CRI's Shen Ting discovered at the 2017 Qingdao International Folk Festival, these commodities have found a very willing market here in China.

The Qingdao International Sailing Centre was built on the former site of the Beihai shipyard, for the 2008 Summer Olympics and so is no stranger to welcoming international crowds and commodities.

In addition to a rich variety of cultural activities, this year's folk festival also showcased a huge number of foreign products seeking to enter the Chinese market.

Popular at the festival, a great number of German made items, debuting in China thanks to a series of deals signed as a result of a Sino-German business platform, part of the Sino-German Ecopark based in Qingdao.

Madam Wang heads up the park.

"German beer is highly popular in its home country. Thanks to the tradition of long-term cooperation between Germany and Qingdao, commodities imported from Germany are quite well-received among local citizens, they particularly like the beer. The method of beer brewing in Qingdao actually originated from Germany."
 

This year's Qingdao Folk Festival presented four main activity zones, including an exhibition that showcases national and international folk crafts, displays of folk customs worldwide, as well as a change to sample local Qingdao tourism products and services, and also delicious foods from around the world.

Snack foods from Germany, Spain and Belgium have been pulling in the crowds.

Exhibitors from these three European nations teamed up to showcase their tasty offerings.

Visitors were given the chance to see how bread is baked, and most importantly taste the finished product. Reymon King is an exhibitor from Germany:

"We are exhibiting Belgian chocolates, German bread, and all types of European foods. We hope that more people in Qingdao will come to better understand the European food culture through such a festive platform, and also enhance communication and exchanges between the two sides."

Elsewhere at the festival, exhibitors wearing Arab folk costumes gave a live show of folk customs from their home countries. To the accompaniment of traditional music, they also displayed Arabian silverware, jade and handicrafts, and were happy to have their photos taken with visitors.

Jiang Yuting organised the Arabic handicraft section of the festival.

"The folk festival is being held in line with the Belt and Road initiative to enhance communication and connectivity. Traditional Arabian products are being promoted at the festival, providing a closer link to the countries involved."

The folk festival has not only attracted a large number of international exhibitors, but also many from China too.

A traditional dye workshop, located in Zhoucun village, offered a feast for eyes. Workshop operator Wang Jianzhong is a famous artist from a family with generations of experience of applying natural dye, teaching visitors how to dye a white T-shirt blue, with different patterns.

Yuan Huan runs the company's workshop in Qingdao city.

"We set up a booth for interactive activities with visitors. Visitors can dye scarves, clothes, beaded adornment dresses, as well as household items. We have a teacher specifically to teach visitors the basic skills of dyeing a dress, scarf or stockings. We demonstrate the practices of gradual dyeing, leveling, and tie dyeing to make colorful scarves, using natural dye extracted from plant stems, leaves, roots, petals, and fruit. In the old days, before chemical dyes, plants and minerals were mainly used as natural dyes. Today in Qingdao, using traditional crafts and natural materials as natural dyes has become a rare practice that has undergone a significant decline."

According to an official with the Festival's organizing committee, Guan Haitao, the folk festival also aims to encourage domestic handicrafts and promote folk cultural performances, creating a new feature of economic and trade exchanges with other nations.