Cultural fair highlights link to tech innovations

With its first artificial intelligence pavilion and a record number of international exhibitors, China's largest cultural fair opened on Thursday in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, showcasing the immense potential of using technology to invigorate, empower and promote culture.

The 21st China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair, which runs through Monday, features over 120,000 cultural products from more than 6,000 exhibitors, and is expected to attract around 35,000 visitors from 110 countries and regions.

The fair has also set records in terms of the number of participating countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, international exhibitors and international professionals attending the event.

The core exhibition area of the fair, which presents outstanding cultural and creative products from across China, has been expanded to 3,000 square meters.

A separate AI pavilion displays the latest tech products, including robots, drones, smart glasses and smart headphones.

The Liaoning province pavilion has garnered extra attention with its humanoid robots portraying famous Chinese poets Li Bai and Du Fu. The showstopper robots — one waving a brush and the other sipping wine — interacted with visitors, recited lines from the two poets' famous works, and even shared how they felt about attending the grand fair.

Liu Shihua, brand manager of EX ROBOT based in Dalian, Liaoning, said the company has modeled dozens of robots after renowned historical figures, including Confucius, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

It plans to promote the use of these robots in providing introductory services at tourist attractions, as well as in educational settings focused on culture, history and science, with the aim of further leveraging technological prowess to boost cultural promotion, Liu added.

Look AI, a Shenzhen-based tech startup that has developed an online platform to help global clothing designers to better integrate with AI technologies, is among those attending the fair for the first time. Based on simple sketches created by designers, the platform can help generate high-quality visual representations of clothing displays, while users can select different types of fabric to adjust the final effect.

The startup, which was established less than a year ago, has accumulated 100,000 users from 180 countries for its online platform.

Chen Xiao, marketing manager of Look AI, said its services have been tailored for the younger generation's personalized clothing needs, adding that Shenzhen's rich resources in fashion brands and apparel manufacturing have helped advance the company's development.

In the long run, Look AI hopes to evolve its marquee product into a comprehensive platform that links customers, designers and manufacturers, in order to allow ordinary people to design their ideal clothes.

Shree Gopal Shrestha, who runs a thangka-making company in Nepal, said he has visited China frequently to attend promotion exhibitions, mostly held in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing.

Shrestha expressed his desire to explore various technological approaches at the fair to promote the exquisite paintings.