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The
11th Session of Senior’s Fair was held in Baoding
from Oct. 5-7,2001. Since 1991, Baoding has been holding a
Festival especially for the elders, called “Festival of
Respecting the Aged and Promoting the health”.
Starting from 1993, Baoding’s festival has established a
sisterhood relationship with a similar festival in Quebec, Canada.
Since 1993,every year, visitors from Canada come to attend the
festival. This year, there were 83 Canadians, most of them in
their high age, attending this festival, the local newspaper
“Baoding Daily” reported.
During this festival,
visitors, especially foreign visitors got a warm welcome.
Everywhere they went, there were a lot of smiles.
Four
of the coming visitors were elected as “the Healthy Aged
Personnel”, they received a certificate from the Mayor of
Baoding , young pioneers present flowers to the respected old
people. The Mayor of Baoding delivered a welcoming speech, while
the visiting guest gave a thanks speech.
After the opening ceremony, the coming visitors were
entertained with a performance mainly completed by old people.
The
visitors were also invited to visit the local citizens’
families. The 83 visitors were divided into 13 groups and each
group into each family, with a French-speaking student from the
local university. The host and hostess are chosen from hundreds of
volunteers, the successors are mainly retired couples with sons
and grandchildren living together, which is regarded as a symbol
of happy family in China. The warm-hearted hostess also taught the
visitors the way to make “jiaozi”, a welcoming food for
festivals. “We spent an unforgettable afternoon.”
said a excited Canadian.
The visited factory authority presented a welcoming
performance to the people of Canada, a country well known to all
Chinese because of a hero called Doctor Norman
Bethune, who helped
the Chinese people in the anti-Japanese war, and died in the
mountains in Baoding.
During the evening, the vice-mayor held a welcoming
banquet.
What put the Baoding stay to a highlight is the morning
exercises. In the early morning of Oct. 7, the coming visitors
found hundreds of hundreds of people, mostly elders, were doing
all kinds of activities in the park. The activities were different
, but the purpose was the same, that is to keep fit.
Some people were playing Taiji, Qigong, others kicking
shuttlecocks, playing hollow
bamboo. Exercises drawn special
interest is an old man, called Li, who plays rotating ironballs, (ironball
is a invention of Baoding), nobody believes a man can play with 67
balls in one hand and keeps them rotating until they see Mr. Li. A
singing group treated the visitors with a song called “Red River
Valley” in Chinese, the Canadians song back, which amused the
locals very much.
Every evening during their stay in Baoding, the visitors
accept medical massage in their hotel rooms from doctors of
Baoding Massage Hospital.
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