Adventures on Qingming Festival 2023: The Song of Yizhou

Qingming, when the sky is clear and the breeze is gentle, is the perfect time for Chinese people to enjoy the beautiful springtime scenery with friends or return to hometown to pay respects to ancestors. At the same time, the festival allows us to appreciate the cultural connotation of Qingming as one of the “Four Major Traditional Chinese Festivals”. Adventures on Qingming Festival 2023, to be aired on Henan TV and Elephant News at 19:30 on April 4, features celebrities from the circles of music, dance, and culture, such as Fu Jing, Güldiyar Anaryit, Liu Jie, Luo Wenbo, Tu Honggang, Wu Bixia, Zi De Guqin Studio, and Zhao Liang, who will take the audience on a magical springtime journey.

When producing Adventures on Qingming Festival 2023, the production team branches out into ethnic minority song and dance for the first time and joins hands with Kumul, Xinjiang. The Song of Yizhou draws inspiration from famous Tang painting Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk and recreates the production, transportation, and trading of white silk, bearing witness to the connectivity between the Central Plains and Xinjiang. The unique Xinjiang song and dance show incorporates local elements such as Muqam music, peony-patterned embroidery, Kumul melon, and splendid views of Dahaidao area, desert, oasis, Euphrates poplar forest, the Singing Sand Dunes, and the Türk Lake. While presenting breathtaking spectacles, it speaks volumes about the fact that the Chinese civilization is a mélange of various ethnic cultures.

Since the Spring Festival Gala in 2021, Henan TV has been refining its shows themed on Chinese festivals, bringing out the cultural connotations of traditional festivals and innovating new ways of presentation, leaving the audience eagerly awaiting what comes next. Lu Hongli, chief director of Adventures on Qingming Festival 2023 who produced serial programs for the Lantern Festival, the Qixi Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the Double Ninth Festival, elaborated sensational shows such as Guardian Warriors of Longmen, Shaolin Kung Fu, and The Lantern Festival Fair in the Song Dynasty. This time, Lu and her team will showcase the art and culture of Qingming, tapping deeper into the dynamics and hope of Qingming and the emotional value that is unique to the festival through a multitude of songs, dances and instrumental performances.