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Cultural flavour for Lunar New Year
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ON January 25, the second day of the Spring Festival, Cai Xianping bought seven sets of encyclopedias for children at Shenzhen Book City. He said he was going to give them to his neighbours' seven children in place of the more traditional red-envelope lucky money.
This small act is symbolic of Shenzhen's growing love of learning and fascination with all things cultural.
It is true that people have changed the way they celebrate this most important Chinese festival. Instead of marking the occasion with lavish banquets and fancy clothes or marathon Mahjong games, this year many people in the city spent it by visiting libraries, art galleries and bookstores.
On the first day of the festival, a 25-five-year-old man named Li Hao was reading a book entitled Science of Marketing in the city library. Near him were a dozen others engrossed in other books. Li is working to attain a college diploma, and so uses his spare time to study.
As usual, little children were given some money, or Lishi, during the Spring Festival. Many of them, though, spent their money in bookstores rather than on candy or toys. The kids' sections of many bookstores were packed, with kindergarteners flipping through picture books and primary school students reading their favourite stories of Chinese and foreign literature. Li Zhi, a student at the Shenzhen Foreign Languages School, said he had gone to the bookstore every day since January 25, the second day of the festival, and that he had spent all his lucky money on books.
Meanwhile, art galleries around the city drew throngs of visitors. Seeing the crowds, a college student who came to Shenzhen for the festival said he was surprised to have found that the city has so much interest in culture, contrary to the swiftly-fading myth of the city's obsession with money.(Wu Yan)
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