Greater Bay Area pupils' poetry season kicks off in Guangzhou

The opening ceremony of the 2019 Greater Bay Area Pupils' Poetry Season got underway at Guangzhou Pui Ching Middle School on July 5.

This year has seen the upgrading of the Guangdong Pupils Poetry Festival to the Greater Bay Area Pupils' Poetry Season, which is one of the 11 special activities of the Guangzhou-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Culture and Arts Festival.

The opening ceremony was sponsored by the Department of Education of Guangdong Province and Nanfang Media Group. Over 1,000 people including teachers and students representatives from the Greater Bay Area, as well as those from culture and education circles attended the ceremony. 

The recital of A Friendly Smile, a Cantonese poem, marked the opening of the ceremony. Young Cantonese Opera inheritors from the Greater Bay Area also performed a famous show on the same stage, showing that the three places share the same roots and cultural spirit.

The flag-presenting ceremony for a special "family travel in the Greater Bay Area" event was also held on the same day. As a key part of the poetry season, the activity has attracted over 300 families in the Greater Bay Area who will pay a visit to Lingnan on July 13 and 14. 

In Guangzhou, the families will go to Yong Qing Fang, a neighborhood famous for its qilou buildings, the Cantonese Opera Art Museum, the Guangzhou Urban Planning and Exhibition Center, and other cultural landmarks in Lingnan to experience historic Guangzhou in a comprehensive way. In Foshan, they will go to the National Arts Studios and attend intangible culture heritage camps. The activity will also invite children from underdeveloped areas to spend a poetic summer holiday together.

The Guangdong Pupil Poetry Festival was first held in 2010. More than 500,000 young poets began their interest in poetry through this event.  

This year, the Guangdong Pupil Poetry Festival has been upgraded to the Greater Bay Area Pupils' Poetry Season, with the intention of guarding children's real, comfortable, and interesting expressions, while creating a platform for children's poetry. Children can contribute their poems to the "Nanfang Plus" app to participate in the activity. 

"As one of the initiators of the festival and a judge in the 10-year of this activity, I have witnessed the growth of the festival,"said Yang Ke, a famous poet in China. He has seen many excellent young poets develop through it. He expressed wishes that the poetry season in 2019 entices more children to become interested in poetry.