Eight winners and finalists of the first Silk Road Global News Awards attended an arts activity and visited the Cantonese Opera Art Museum in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province on Wednesday, October 25.
The winners and finalists from eight countries joined Guangzhou painters to learn brush strokes and extended their wishes for a bright future for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Kapoks, the municipal flower of Guangzhou, were depicted in the painting, glowing with the promising prospects of the BRI.
The first Silk Road Global News Awards winners and finalists add stamens and pistils to the kapok flowers' petals. (Photo: People's Daily)
The artwork symbolized how Belt and Road cooperation has progressed from, in the words of Chinese President Xi Jinping, "sketching the outline" to "filling in the details".
Song Lujing, vice president of the Guangzhou Painting Academy, painted the kapok petals, followed by the awards winners and finalists adding stamens and pistils.
After completing the work, the winners and finalists wrote their names in their mother tongue on the scroll and tried to write some Chinese characters using a brush.
Yolaidy Martinez, a journalist from Cuba, tries to write the character fu, or “good fortune” in English, with a brush. (Photo: People's Daily)
Nurzhan Kasmalieva, head of the international department of Kabar News Agency in Kyrgyzstan, wrote the characters zhong guo, or "China" in English, and posed for a photo with her work.
"I have always been interested in Chinese culture, tried to learn Chinese," said Kasmalieva. "I can speak some simple Chinese sentences. I have some applications for learning Chinese on my phone.
"The two Chinese characters for 'China' are the ones I searched for with the app and then wrote them down by imitating them."
Nurzhan Kasmalieva shows the "China" characters she wrote with a brush. (Photo: People's Daily)
The Silk Road Global News Awards awarding ceremony was held in Beijing on October 19. Serving as an international showcase for excellent media from countries along the Belt and Road, the awards are designed to promote exchanges and mutual learning among different media for strengthening media cooperation in Belt and Road construction.
The awards honor media and people from diverse backgrounds who appreciate and spread the idea and implementation of the BRI.
"I firmly believe that there will be closer cooperation and more frequent exchanges among media from the countries of BRI, which can contribute to promoting cultural exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations," said Faruk Boric, executive director of Center for the Promotion of Belt and Road Initiative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
(Coordination: Li Fang; Planning: Shi Pengfei; Moderation: Chen Zhenkai; Text: Liang Xiaojian, Zhang Jiawen and Zhang Chen; Video: Liang Xiaojian, Dong Xingchen and Wang Ruxin)