CULTURAL FEST. Fashion models wear Filipiniana and Hanfu clothing at the 2023 China-Philippines Cultural Festival in Quezon City on Tuesday (Oct. 24, 2023). The event also featured various performances, including a Chinese Peking Opera. (PNA photo by Joyce Ann Rocamora)
MANILA – The Philippines and China carried on with the second staging of their cultural festival last Oct. 24 in the wake of growing tensions over an ongoing maritime row.
The 2023 Philippines-China Cultural Festival, organized by the Chinese Embassy in Manila and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), featured various performances, including a Chinese Peking Opera and a Filipiniana-Hanfu fashion show featuring the traditional clothing of the two countries.
The NCCA said the festival was held under the ambit of the Executive Program for Cultural Cooperation between the Philippines and China, and was only revived during the pandemic.
“Despite the challenges presented to us, we continue to stress the importance of culture and the arts as powerful forces that bridge differences and facilitate dialogues,” NCCA Chairperson Victorino Mapa Manalo said in his remarks, which was read by his representative NCCA Executive Director Oscar Casaysay.
Mapa hoped that the initiative would “enhance understanding and mutual respect” between the two nations.
Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian, who was at the event, said he sees cultural exchanges playing a big role in fostering “friendly bonds between the two peoples” of China and the Philippines.
“Both with our open arms, we aspire to have more Filipino friends actively engaged with Chinese culture in the hope that the two sides would work together to secure new prospects of China-Philippine cultural and people-to-people exchanges,” he said.
The previous Philippine-China Cultural Festival was held in 2022 at the Metropolitan Theater in Manila.
The 2023 show was staged in Quezon City, with more than a hundred audience in attendance, including Film Development Council of the Philippines chairperson Tirso Cruz III and Department of Foreign Affairs Ladies Foundation Inc. chairperson Pamela Louise Manalo. (PNA)
