The 2nd Grand Canal Culture and Tourism Expo commenced in Wuxi, Jiangsu province on Sept 3 and will be held in both Wuxi and Huai’an, another city in Jiangsu, until Sept 7.

The Grand Canal is a vast waterway system that extends throughout the northeastern and central-eastern plains of China, running from Beijing in the north to Zhejiang province in the south.

Five Zhejiang cities, namely Hangzhou, Ningbo, Shaoxing, Jiaxing, and Huzhou, have their own booths at the culture and tourism exhibition for cities on the canal.

The Huzhou booth is themed around the city's proud cultural traditions related to silk, porcelain, tea, and brush pens. Dai Yulong, a distinguished Huzhou writing bush artist, is even demonstrating how to hand-make brush pens at the booth. According to Dai, the manufacturing process involves many different procedures and a worker can make at most 20 brush pens per day.

Various types of Huzhou writing bushes are displayed at the Huzhou booth at the 2nd Grand Canal Culture and Tourism Expo in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. [Photo/zj.zjol.com.cn]

The Jiaxing booth promotes the city's intangible cultural heritage items, creative cultural products, Grand Canal tourism routes, and "Red Boat" revolutionary culture, as the Communist Party of China's first National Congress was held on a boat over Nanhu Lake in Jiaxing 99 years ago.

The expo's organizers include the Publicity Department of the CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee, the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, the Jiangsu Foreign Affairs Office, the Jiangsu Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the Wuxi municipal government, and the Huaian municipal government.