People across China are celebrating in diverse ways the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival which falls on September 17 this year.
A well-preserved traditional custom, "burning a brick tower," also a national intangible cultural heritage, has been staged in Ji'an City, east China's Jiangxi Province.
Every year, people from Jiaxi Village build a tower with bricks and tiles, and fill it with straws, firewood and tree leaves. They light the fire at the bottom of the tower, and the flames pour out of the tower immediately, lighting up the sky.
Locals usually admire the moon and eat mooncakes while enjoying the fire to celebrate the festival.
"Every year, I go back to my hometown here to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival in the traditional way, which brings me a great sense of happiness," said Zhan Danwen, a local villager. For hundreds of years, picking fruits and vegetables has been one of the activities for Tujia ethnic people to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, with a good blessing of harvest for the year.
This year in Jianshi County, Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, central China's Hubei Province, tourists joined the celebration of locals by picking eggplants, chili peppers and corns in the garden, with torches lighting the night sky.
Located in Xinzhou city in north China's Shanxi Province, the Mount Wutai Scenic Spot saw soaring numbers of tourists from Aug 22 to Sept 7, an increase of 22 percent year on year.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is a significant traditional Chinese festival celebrated on the night when the moon reaches its fullest and brightest on the 15th day of the eighth month on the Chinese lunar calendar.
During the festival, family members would come together, share mooncakes while admiring the moon, and light up lanterns to enjoy the happiness of family reunion.
Celebrations across China begin for Mid-Autumn Festival
China and other member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), pledged to enhance sustainable development cooperation at a Thursday conference in Tianjin, ahead of this year's SCO summit.
As the rotating chair for this year, China is to host the SCO summit in Tianjin this autumn. The China-SCO Conference on Industrial Cooperation for Sustainable Development is one of the activities organized during a promotion event from Wednesday to Friday. It aims to promote cooperation in fields like infrastructure, energy, mining and petrifaction.
Nearly 400 guests, including government officials and enterprises from SCO member states attended the opening session.
"In 2024, China's trade volume with SCO member states, observer states and dialogue partners reached a record high of 890 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for about 14.4 percent of China's total foreign trade volume, fully demonstrating the tremendous vitality and broad prospects of trade development within the region," said Ling Ji, vice minister of commerce and deputy China international trade representative, at the conference.
As China has extensive experience in promoting sustainable development, attendees from SCO member states expressed hope to strengthen cooperation with China across various sectors, said SCO Deputy Secretary General Sohail Khan.
"China plays a very, very important, significant role in sustainable development, as I said, so we are expecting that in the sustainable development context, all member states have lot to gain and learn from China on its achievements in various areas, like agricultural industries, energy, high tech, information technology, and robot AI," he said.
By the end of 2024, China's investment stocks in SCO member states, observer states and dialogue partners have exceeded 140 billion U.S. dollars, with the total value of contracts signed by Chinese enterprises in these countries exceeding one trillion U.S. dollars and the completed turnover surpassing 680 billion U.S. dollars.
In 2024, about 19,000 China-Europe freight train ran through the SCO region, marking a year-on-year increase of 10.7 percent and significantly promoting regional connectivity and economic development.
China, SCO member states pledge deeper sustainable development cooperation
