The 2023 National Village Spring Festival Gala Alliance Conference is held in Heyang village. [Photo/Lishui Daily]

The 2023 National Village Spring Festival Gala Alliance Conference was held in Heyang village in Jinyun county – administered by Lishui city in East China's Zhejiang province – on Jan 13.

The event also marked the start of this year's Village Spring Festival Gala nationwide.

The Village Spring Festival Gala – a much-loved event celebrated throughout the nation – started in Lishui's Yueshan village in 1981. After more than 40 years of development, the gala has spread all over the country – extending to around 69,000 villages in 552 counties, becoming a cultural symbol of China's rural areas.

A lion dance performance takes place during the event. [Photo/Lishui Daily]

At the conference, the Cuiwan Mengjuchang, or Village Spring Festival Gala Dream Theater – a digital application – was launched. The application aims to create a Village Spring Festival Gala resource pool, to the realize optimal sharing of resources and accurate monitoring of the regional cultural development index.

In recent years, Lishui has been focusing on the standardization, digitization and industrialization of the Village Spring Festival Gala to achieve a deeper level of development.

To date, Lishui has created six demonstration counties and 10 experience and tour routes for the Village Spring Festival Gala. Every year, more than 200,000 tourists come to Lishui to experience the Spring Festival in its rural areas.

An opera is staged during the event. [Photo/Lishui Daily]