7 May 2019
From April 20 to 27, under the guidance of the Shanghai Municipal Education and Health Work Party Committee and the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, sponsored by the Resident Headquarters of Shanghai’s Counterpart Support for Xinjiang and organized by the Shanghai Theatre Academy (STA) and the Shanghai Young the tour of cultural exchanges between Shanghai University Students and Shanghai Youth Volunteer Association, the Shanghai University Student Volunteers’ Cultural Exchange and Performance Tour was successfully held in Kashgar, Xinjiang. On the tour, the volunteers traveled over 1,000 kilometers and went to Kashgar municipality as well as Bachu, Zepu, Yecheng and Shache counties where they staged five performances offering am audiovisual cultural feast to more than 20,000 local teachers and students, thereby further broadening the scope of educational contacts and exchanges between Shanghai and Kashgar, inheriting and promoting the Chinese classic culture, and paying a tribute to the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
During the tour, students from seven universities, including STA, the East China Normal University and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, performed fashion show, Peking Opera, puppet show, martial arts, brass music, synchronized rope skipping, musical plays and programs of other artistic forms at the artistic level representative of Shanghai university students to enrich the busy study life of local students, and also to show the role and power of art education in the growth of young students. As a comprehensive art university, STA had selected 6 programs and 22 performers to participate in the performance tour. The performance tour won applause and praise everywhere it went. Local TV stations, newspapers and other mainstream media all carried reports about it.
In addition to touring performances, the cultural volunteer team also brought wonderful art lectures. Before the first performance, Professor Feng Yanrong, an associate professor of character modeling design at the Stage Design Department of STA, held a lecture on fashion modeling for more than 300 teachers and students of the Kashgar Vocational and Technical College, which opened the window of fashion for the audience, broadened their horizons and won unanimous praise.
The exchange and performance tour also set up a platform for students in terms of the development and implementation of socialist core values, as well as moral education and campus culture exchange, and shared a traveling ideological and political class.
Although the cultural exchange and performance tour in Kashgar, Xinjiang was short, the students let fly their youthful dreams and friendship between ethnic groups on the stage. They used the academic knowledge and artistic talents that they had learned at school to serve, and also brought Shanghai's cultural concepts and Shanghai-style art to the local areas. They fully demonstrated the charm of today’s Shanghai university students and the diversified style of Shanghai as an international cosmopolitan city featuring openness and inclusiveness, and contributed to the realization of the good vision of cohering national spirit through cultural co-development and enhancing national self-confidence through shared civilization.
