The 9th Ba-culture Festival of Arts is held at the Bazhou District Theater in Bazhong on Sept 22 [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Co-organized by the Sichuan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, Bazhong Municipal Committee of the CPC and Bazhong Municipal People's Government, the 9th Ba-culture Festival of Arts was held at the Bazhou District Theater in Bazhong on Sept 22, attracting more than 500 guests and representatives of cultural tourism and economic and trade organizations from 31 cities of eight provinces.

The festival featured a large-scale folk art drama created according to the story of Zhou Yongkai, a recipient of the July 1st Medal and an outstanding representative of Bazhong. The drama displayed Zhou's glorious course of life through three key events in his life.

This festival highlighted the theme of pioneers of Ba people, embodying its feature of "grand event of art and people's festival" by being held at a main venue and several branch venues, both indoor and outdoor, both online and offline and with professional and amateur performances. The festival used livestreaming to coordinate performances at the Bazhou theater, Xintiandi Square and Baren Square.

The festival included six categories, including artistic performance, cultural tourism exhibition, cultural tourism promotion, business communication, inspection tour and cultural interview. It featured more than 10 activities for guests and visitors from the country, such as outstanding artistic performances, a promotional event for the 5+N urban cultural tourism alliance, a promotional meeting for cultural tourism performing arts products, and the announcement of Bazhong's official city logo, tree and flowers.

As a cultural festival for promoting traditional Chinese culture, building regional cultural and tourism brand and boosting regional cultural tourism integration, the Ba-culture Festival of Arts has been held eight times since 2002.