On November 11th, the 12th Anhui International Culture and Tourism Festival, hosted by Anhui provincial government and organized by department of Culture and Tourism of Anhui Province and Huangshan municipal government, commenced in Huangshan municipality. Zhang Xu, vice minister of Culture and Tourism, Wang Cuifeng, vice governor of Anhui province and Li Xiusong, vice chairman of Anhui Political Consultative Conference, were present during the opening ceremony.
Zhang Xu expressed that Anhui has been advancing innovation in management, products, and services in recent years, attempting to deepen the integrated development of culture and tourism, improve public services and expand cultural and people-to-people exchanges. The festival, representing a demonstration of the deep integrated development of culture and tourism, will further expand Anhui’s international popularity and influence and promote international exchanges and cooperation in culture and tourism. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism will continue to support Anhui to expand foreign exchanges and cooperation and advance high-quality development of Anhui’s cultural tourism industry so as to meet the needs of people for a better life.
Wang Cuifeng said that Anhui represents “the condensation of beautiful China”, “the quintessence of cultural China” and “the pilot of ecological China”. Under the theme of the integrated development of culture, the Anhui International Culture and Tourism Festival underlines an international, cultural and tourism Anhui in order to present its new fruits in culture and tourism. It is expected to strive for building a high-level platform for exchanges and cooperation, and send out sincere invitation to share opportunities and pursue win-win cooperation. Besides, more people will be encouraged to have an understanding of Anhui’s development, pay attention to its culture and tourism and share its opportunities for development.
During the festival, a series of events, such as international travel agent conference for travel routes and negotiation, Anhui self-driving tour conference, and annual summit of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) observatories on sustainable tourism in China, will be hosted. Nearly 270 guests comprising of foreign diplomats to China, representatives from some provincial cultural and tourism departments and UNWTO, as well as travel agents, attended the opening ceremony and other events. Meanwhile, there are 140 or so national and provincial intangible heritage projects picked from 30 provinces (regions and municipalities), as well as about 60 intangible projects selected within Anhui province to display its fine local culture in the exhibition.