The 16th East China Normal University (ECNU) International Cultural Festival kicked off at the ECNU Putuo Campus in Shanghai on Dec 11.
The festival, which has long been a popular annual campus event of ECNU, celebrates and showcases diversity as well as offers a stage to display students' talents and their national cultures. The cultural feast features a "Mini Expo", various performances, and a number of cultural experience activities.
This year, students representing 44 countries from six continents attended the event. More than 150 Chinese and foreign students presented singing and dancing performances.
This year's "Mini Expo" had a lineup of all kinds of booths offering dazzling arrays of handicrafts and exotic foods. International students demonstrated their abilities and brought the attendees closer to the delicious and varied delicacies from many countries, and the decision to include the "Gourmet Masters" cooking competition as one of the many cultural festival activities during event brought the ambiance on site to a peak.
Gu Hongliang, vice-president of ECNU, said that the core of this year's festival would lie in the word "integration", including the "heart of integration" as represented by international student volunteers who once participated in the campus's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic; the "feeling of integration" as represented by the overseas international students who embarked on a long journey back to campus; and the "beauty of integration" as represented by the International Cultural Festival which promotes cultural exchanges and mutual learning among different countries.
Ole Eidskrem, a Norwegian student from the School of International Chinese Studies, expressed his deep feelings for China and ECNU in fluent Chinese. "After an absence of almost three years, I became the first Norwegian student to obtain a study visa to return to China in August this year after the COVID-19 pandemic. My heart is always with ECNU and China!" Eidskrem exclaimed. He added that he would like to serve as a bridge for exchanges between China, Norway and even the West in the future to help people around the world better understand China.
