Flower festival teams tradition with technology

With spring arriving in Shanghai and vibrant flowers blooming across the city, the annual Huazhao Festival held in the city's Yuyuan is attracting visitors in traditional Chinese culture in a modern, dynamic way.

The flower festival, held the second month of the lunar calendar to celebrate the flower goddess' birthday, boasts a history of over 2,000 years. According to ancient beliefs, the flower goddess controls human reproduction, and celebrating her birthday has become a custom to bring prosperity.

Running until the end of April, this year's festival integrates traditional culture with modern technology, offering visitors a feast for the eyes and ears. Colorful light shows, parades of performers dressed as the flower goddess, and dance and musical performances are taking place at landmarks within Yuyuan, including its Central Plaza, Gold Plaza and Jiuqu (Zigzag) Bridge areas.

Decorated with floral elements, the ancient architecture and sets are transformed into stages. With advanced projection technology, the dynamic lights jump to the beat of music on building roofs and laser beams flash across the fog on the lotus pond, creating a vibrant atmosphere.

The music for the light show was tailor-made for Yuyuan by a French musical team, presenting a unique blend of East and West influences, tradition and modernity.

Against the architectural backdrop, dance and music performances feature guofeng, a Chinese style that uses traditional cultural elements. The dance performance in the Central Plaza is a reproduction of a famed painting depicting ladies with floral headdresses in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), and the folk music duet in the Gold Plaza blends ancient Chinese music with modern melodies, drawing large crowds.

In addition to the innovative technologies and eye-catching shows, a slew of interactive activities are offered during the festival, particularly targeting young audiences. Working with the makeup team of Xiaohongshu (RedNote), a popular Chinese lifestyle platform, the festival includes a market offering visitors immersive experiences such as traditional makeup, fragrance sachet-making, flower hair-pinning, hair braiding, an arrow toss and poetry writing.

"We are bringing some of our beauty bloggers and vloggers to the market to share their experiences. There are many visitors from home and abroad and we want to demonstrate our Chinese traditions and culture," says Xu Tongru from the makeup team at Xiaohongshu.

Wang Qiru, a 33-year-old makeup artist and popular makeup vlogger on the platform, was invited to the market to meet her followers and offer visitors to experience a popular makeup style from the Tang Dynasty. Becoming a makeup artist specializing in restoring ancient makeup styles in 2022, she hopes to help more audiences learn about this art form.

"Most of my clients are 20 to 35 years old, and I have seen more people paying attention to our traditional culture recently. Although it is easy to gain interest and basic knowledge of traditional culture, such as hanfu and makeup, it takes a lot of time and effort if you go deep into it," says Wang, noting that abundant knowledge of ancient Chinese history and culture is necessary for doing such classic makeup.

Zhang Ruiqi, a 19-year-old university student in Shanghai, is one of Wang's followers. Dressed up and doing makeup at Wang's booth, she says she has been fond of ancient Chinese makeup since she was younger.

"I find it interesting to dig into history by restoring ancient makeup styles. At first, my interest in traditional clothing was triggered by costume dramas but when I learned about real hanfu, I felt more fascinated. It's worth studying," she says with a smile.

Foreign visitors at Yuyuan share Zhang's perspective despite knowing little about the festival before attending. Gerald Mohnl, a 57-year-old Austrian, gained a "nice" experience at Yuyuan on his last day of a business trip to China. Making his first visit to the country and Shanghai, he was impressed by the electric vehicles and described the city as "very clean and super modern".

"We went through Yuyuan, which was a really nice experience. There are a lot of traditional buildings here. Chinese culture is interesting and totally different from our culture. It is very comfortable with friendly people," he says.

Susan Willis, an Australian nurse on her first visit to Shanghai, was about to finish her 10-day trip and was impressed by the buildings at Yuyuan.

"The architecture is lovely, traditional and classic. Shanghai is an innovative and spectacular city," she says, adding that she knew little about Chinese culture and felt she learned a lot.

wangxin2@chinadaily.com.cn