Chinese Culture Festival highlights Hong Kong’s rich cultural inheritance

Tantalising highlights of some of the music, dance, Chinese opera, multi-arts stage performances, film shows, exhibitions, talks, meet-the-artists sessions and masterclasses featured during Hong Kong’s inaugural Chinese Culture Festival – now running until mid-September – were on show in the city at last month’s “Encountering Chinese Culture” Carnival.

The inaugural festival, the flagship event of the Chinese Culture Promotion Office of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, aims to promote “Chinese culture and patriotic education as well as enhancing national identity amongst the people of Hong Kong”.

Traditional culture given contemporary appeal

The one-day carnival, held at Sha Tin Town Hall and New Town Plaza on June 9, featured excerpts from different stage programmes of the festival, including an electrifying performance by the award-winning Refiner Drums troupe, titled “Fight Between the Bull and the Tiger”.

The troupe, which was formed in 2007 by a young Hong Kong drummer, Jason Leung, and now comprises more than 20 members, showcased drum music from Jiangzhou in Shanxi province, northern China, which has been listed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of China.

The concert served as a preview of the show titled “The Concert of Drum Music Art Ensemble of Jiangzhou, Shanxi and their Hong Kong Inheritors” (3pm, July 21, Auditorium, Sha Tin Town Hall), which is one of the headline events during the four-month festival.

“The performance tells the story of the two animals’ meeting, then staring one another down, then the duelling of the bull and the tiger, represented by the two drummers,” Leung says. “Shanxi Jiangzhou drum music was a nearly forgotten craft in China about 20 to 30 years ago, until artists from Shanxi Jiangzhou Drum Troupe visited different villages and rediscovered what had been lost.”