The lion and the dragon are coming to Valletta

A Chinese Spring Festival will be held in Valletta for the first time on February 13.

Republic Street will be decorated with hundreds of Chinese lanterns as members of the Shaanxi Folk Art Theatre will entertain the public.

The performers will be at St George's Square at about 10.45 a.m. and perform for half an hour at 11. They will then march to the Upper Barrakka Gardens where they will carry out various numbers.

After the gun salute at the Upper Barrakka at noon, they will give a 15-minute drumming show at the garden.

A spring festival party will be held at St George's Square between 10.30 a.m. and 4 p.m. when about 200 dolls can be won in various games. Other activities will include calligraphy, a tea ceremony, origami and taiji.

Music played on typical Chinese instruments such as the pipa and the zheng will be provided by Chinese students studying at the University of Malta.

In the evening, also at St George's Square, the Folk Art Theatre troupe will present a dance, puppetry and drumming sequence from 7 to 8.30 p.m.

It was Zheng Hao, the director of the China Cultural Centre, in Valletta, who came up with the idea of bringing this colourful spectacle to the capital.

The arrival of the Chinese Spring Festival, Mr Zheng said, means that ice and snow will melt. Spring is round the corner and seeding time has come. The festival expresses the best wishes of the Chinese people for the future.

"We look forward to sharing this harbinger of happiness with the Maltese people.

"The spring festival celebrates the New Year and is the most important festival for China as much as Christmas is for the west.

"The festival goes back 4,000 years when the people used to offer sacrifices to the gods and honour their ancestors hoping for a bountiful harvest," Mr Zheng explained.

With the passage of time the simple dances and performing arts became ever more elaborate.

"We consider the festival as a microcosm of our culture with its acrobatics, the opera, the lion and the dragon dances and garden parties," Mr Zheng added.

Additionally, on February 18, members of the Chinese National Chamber Orchestra from Beijing will give a Chinese New Year concert at the Manoel Theatre, in Valletta.

"During this concert, Chinese instruments will be used also for a piece of traditional western music. People who are familiar with the Chinese concert given annually in Vienna know the wonderful music they can expect," Mr Zheng noted.

The festival will be held with the collaboration of the Valletta local council. Mayor Paul Borg Olivier said the council looks forward to include the festival in its arts calendar.

"Valletta represents Malta's stage for cross cultural activities. We look forward to see others coming on board with similar performances," he said.