“Great Wall of Poetry” extends children’s talents beyond mountains

For thousands of years, the Great Wall has guarded the Chinese territory and the homeland of the Chinese people. On September 3, in a rolling, lush alpine grassland, a string of moving poems composed by little poets living in the mountainous areas made a magnificent “Great Wall of Poetry”, which helps protect the spiritual homeland of these children as well as the common spiritual world for everyone.

This is a special public welfare program called “The Great Wall of Poetry — Let the Undiscovered Literary Talents of Children in the Mountainous areas Shine” launched by this year’s Poetry POS campaign launched by China UnionPay, the country’s top bank card organization. Via livestreaming, the program seeks to display the talents of children in the mountainous areas to the world.

Two representatives of the little poets came to the event site and recited their poems in a grassland surrounded by mountains in Zherong County, Ningde City of southeast China’s Fujian Province. Their voices echoed in the mountains, leaving the poetic feel flow along the “Great Wall of Poetry”. There were also some local intangible heritage performances, which turned this public welfare livestreaming into a cultural feast. In the online livestreaming platform of Xinhua News Agency’s English app, more than 10 million viewers shared this poetic spectacle.

It is worth mentioning that the warm-up of this event has also attracted the attention and support of many famous people at home and abroad. Jake Pinnick, an American who has been practicing martial arts for more than ten years, Robert Adolf, a German who loves Chinese cuisine, Cai Zi, a well-known host, Xiaolin, a painter, and Pan Jiangxue, a pioneer in poverty alleviation, read these children’s poems earnestly in recognition and support of this special public welfare program.

At the event, people got a POS receipt printed with poems by donating one yuan at the UnionPay Poetry POS, and all proceeds will be donated to the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation.

China UnionPay Poetry POS campaign was officially launched in July 2019. Over the past four years, the donations raised have been used in Anhui, Henan, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Yunnan and other regions, helping nearly 5,000 children enjoy artistic literacy lessons.

Source: China UnionPay