Ancient city Xi'an holds cultural event for Chinese New Year

An intangible cultural heritage (ICH)-themed event kicked off in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, on Tuesday to celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year, which falls on Jan. 29.

The event featured nearly 100 types of intangible cultural heritage crafts, cultural creations, and traditional foods from across the country. "I feel an increasingly strong festive atmosphere here, and I hope friends from all over the country will come to Xi'an. Welcome to Xi'an!" said Cheng Lanxin, a local resident.

"Welcome to Xi 'an to experience our splendid traditional culture," said Duan Weigang, an intangible cultural heritage inheritor.

The 52-day-long cultural fair will introduce 173 special New Year customs activities, including the Chang'an Lantern Festival and cultural research programs. These efforts aim to inherit and promote excellent traditional Chinese culture, stimulate consumption, and offer another festive cultural tourism feast full of Xi'an characteristics for residents, domestic and international tourists.

"We add traditional Chinese symbols of auspiciousness, good luck, fortune, emolument, longevity, happiness to our paintings, combining them with modern cartoons to create something that appeals to both refined and popular tastes. In this painting, the seven colors -- red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple -- represent sunshine and passion. This serves as a way for everyone to engage closely with the inheritance of our national culture," said Li Haihong, fourth generation inheritor of intangible cultural heritage cotton batting painting.

The fair set up 90 booths, showcasing a total of 110 representative projects. In the paper cutting area, representative inheritor Tu Yonghong from Xi'an presented a set of paper-cutting related to New Year customs.

"Paper cutting is essential to the festive atmosphere. We should attract more young people and help them to understand it and carry on the tradition," said Tu.

Ancient city Xi'an holds cultural event for Chinese New Year

U.S. President Donald Trump's rollout of sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" may lead to global economic recession and will exacerbate inflation in the country, said a Spanish scholar.

Amid widespread opposition, Trump on Wednesday signed two executive orders, imposing a 10-percent "minimum baseline tariff" on all imported goods and higher rates on certain trading partners.

Felix Valdivieso, a professor at IE Business School, told China Central Television (CCTV) that following the imposition of the tariffs, all consumers in the world will feel the pinch.

"These measures will have global economic impacts and may even lead to a recession. Analysts at Moody's Ratings have pointed out that these tariffs will drive up prices. Price increases will directly affect consumers' personal income and spending power, as well as their purchasing power," Valdivieso said.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Thursday announced his government will implement a 14.1 billion euro plan to support the economy in the face of Trump's tariffs.

He called the tariffs a "unilateral attack", saying they will harm the interests of people and businesses in both the EU and the United States itself, an opinion shared by Valdivieso.

"In other words, the U.S. is trying to make money by imposing tariffs, which will also drive up prices of domestic products. According to estimates by American analysts, the price of each car in the U.S. will go up by about 1,000 to 2,000 U.S. dollars after the tariffs are imposed. With car exports to the U.S. blocked, there will be two consequences for Europe. One is that Europe will have to find other markets to sell cars. The other is that it will have to bear the consequences of the decline in car sales in some way, so it has to reduce car production lines and lay off employees," he said.

Trump's tariffs may lead to global recession, exacerbate US inflation: Spanish scholar