The inauguration of the China Xinjiang Cultural Week was held in the evening of May 19 in the auditorium of the Pakistan National Insurance Corporation, Islamabad, starting a series of activities to celebrate the 55^th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Pakistan.

 

The Cultural Week, from May 19 through 27, which is jointly sponsored by the Government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan and the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Pakistan, will show the Pakistani people a real, beautiful, mysterious and vigorous Xinjiang of China by performance of Xinjiang music and dance, exhibitions of books, pictorials, photos, calligraphy works, folk musical instruments, handicrafts and costumes, and movie and TV programs to be telecasted by the PTV.

 

              

 

 

The temperature of Islamabad reached 40 degree Celsius on May 19, but the passions of the Pakistani audiences was even higher. The galleries of the auditorium were blocked, let alone chairs and stairs. During the soiree, the dressed-up artists performed lively Tajik dance, traditional Uygur bowl dance and ethnic instrument playing, etc., pushing the atmosphere of the soiree to one high after another.

 

Though every single movement of each performer was filled with beauty and elegance, however, for the Pakistani audiences, listening the national and traditional Pakistani Urdu songs sung by the Chinese, was a feeling made everyone proud on the Sino-Pak friendship. The auditorium was boiling up, all audiences sang with the music and clapped their hands. Even a few usually shy ladies couldn't help shaking their bodies with the rhythms. A journalist from a local English newspaper the Nation said that the troupe wins the Pakistanis' hearts.

 

 

Pakistani Federal Minister for Culture Ghazi Gulab Jamal, while addressing the exhibition and the cultural performance, said that Pakistan and China share strong and deep bonds of culture and tradition. There is a great similarity in culture and tradition which brings the two countries closer to each other, and people-to-people contact will be further enhanced by organizing a series of cultural and sports events in both the countries.

 

Mr. Zhang Chunxiang, the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan, made his remarks on the occasion, wishing a great success of the Cultural Week as well as other activities celebrating the 55 years' ties. He said that Chinese artists, while braving the hot weather, came to Pakistan and brought various performances with Chinese characteristics to the Pakistani people, giving full display of the new image of China and Xinjiang Region. They were playing a role of a bridge of exchange and understanding between the two peoples and making their contributions to the Sino-Pak friendship.

 

The Xinjiang Arts Troupe gave a special show on May 18 for about five hundred Chinese living in Islamabad and aroused a passionate response.

 

The Troup will give its performance at the reception on May 21 held by the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad to mark the 55^th anniversary and then visit Lahore for the second stage of the Cultural Week.