STORY: Cultural salon featuring Chinese tea attracts Australians
DATELINE: June 16, 2023
LENGTH: 00:02:07
LOCATION: SYDNEY, Australia
CATEGORY: CULTURE

SHOTLIST:
1. various of the event
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (English): DAVID VAN NUNEN, President of the Australian Watercolour Institute
3. SOUNDBITE 2 (English): TRACY SAUNDERS, Sydneysider

STORYLINE:

With light tea aroma, wonderful intangible cultural heritage performances and an elegant tea art show, a tea-themed cultural salon staged in downtown Sydney provided a fresh and immersive experience for Australians.
   
The event, entitled "Tea for Harmony: Yaji Cultural Salon," was held at the China Cultural Center in Sydney on Thursday evening, which is also part of a global event to promote China's tea culture.
   
Visitors had the chance to watch tea-themed traditional Chinese folk dance and tea ceremony performances, taste different kinds of Chinese tea, try paper cutting, and learn more about the history and cultural backgrounds of tea.
   
SOUNDBITE 1 (English): DAVID VAN NUNEN, President of the Australian Watercolour Institute
"It is very beautiful and very light. I think it is wonderful because the way that Australians make their tea generally is not as quite a ceremony or culture. And it is wonderful to see this here and partake in this cultural experience between the two peoples and the two countries."
   
SOUNDBITE 2 (English): TRACY SAUNDERS, Sydneysider
"It was a very new experience for me doing the paper cutting. I'd never heard of that before coming from a different cultural background. But I found that when I was cutting it, the really small intricate techniques of how to hold it, how to cut in the directions, to cut, were very, very minute and just really small, intricate. It took a lot of concentration for me. But it had a sense of mindfulness and had a really calming influence."
   
The tea salon was held along with a cultural and tourism promotion event for east China's Fujian Province, one of the important cradles of Chinese tea culture.

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Sydney, Australia.
(XHTV)