The International Festival organized by UCAS is a platform for the assortment of culture and talents across the countries for understanding culture, knowledge and information. It was a new experience for exchanging the culture that supports in building the strong connection and friendship and upgrading anticipations for world peace culture. It was really the wonderful moment to attend the first international cultural festival organized by UCAS on 14th October, 2018. As a booth member, I got an opportunity to dive into a unique experience in a great time and a day. These types of activities are very important to introduce the culture and tradition of countries among each other. It was really a grand programme with more than 3000 visitors and food, music, custom, tradition and many more from more than 50 countries.
A visitor feeling blessed when one of the booth members of Nepal put Tika on his forehead
Being one of the booth members, I was actively involved in all sorts of activities associated with the program, i.e. preparing foods, stage decoration, and cheering up with guests visiting our stall. We had decorated our stall with Nepali dresses, photos, and illustrations of festivals, food, world heritage listed sites, which can best represent Nepal and Nepalese people. As the culture exchange festival date was during the biggest festival time of Nepal (Dashain), we had prepared some Tika (soaked rice grains, sugar, yoghurt, and mixed with natural red color), in order to put on the forehead of the guests visiting to our booth (as we do during Dashain, considering as the blessings from God). Tika became one of the major centers of attraction of Nepali Booth. We were really glad to see that more than 60% of the visitors put Tika on their forehead in a happy mood. We welcomed visitors with delicious traditional Nepali food, and most of them loved it. Overall the experience was really very good. I also visited booths of other countries and got a chance to know about the tradition, culture, food and many more things. We tried our best to stimulate learning, and information exchanges in support of culture, friendship, and understanding. Participants engaged with each other in the program and also interacting with the local community and environment by sharing cultural, social and educational activities.
Nepali students taking group photo with national flag
“One Belt One Road” (OBOR) is the policy of the Chinese government that decrease the space among each country and encourages the global economy by generating benefits for every country. In order to promote this Silk Road spirit, it is important to boost mutual learning between civilizations among the countries through culture exchange. So this culture exchange festival organized by UCAS could be one of the historical milestones for supporting OBOR program in my view as several students from multiple countries study in UCAS. Thus, we would like to express our sincere thanks to UCAS for providing a platform for a wonderful opportunity to support international students and culture exchange ideas.
Students from multinational countries, and members of IC-UCAS attending the ceremony
Written by Namita Paudel Adhikari (Nepal)
Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
