The 2019 Weishan International Torch Festival took place in west Yunnan’s in Weishan Yi and Hui Autonomous County from July 26 to 28, with its climax on Saturday evening bringing spectators immense festivity.

Featuring a night spectacle created by 1,100 drones and 8 merry-making events, this year’s 3-day festival was jointly held by the Overseas Chinese Town (OCT) and the Yunnan Society for Yi Ethnic Studies.

And it was undertaken by the OCT Yunnan Expo Tourism Group and the Weishan Society for Yi Ethnic Studies.

The 8 merry-making events involved a stunning stage show, a carnival night, a Weishan snack show, a firework show, artistic performances and the Nanzhao cultural exhibition. 

Among them, the stunning multi-dimensional night show, which was jointly staged on July 27 by over 200 artists from Shenzhen, Kunming and Weishan, amazed the audience a lot. Designs depicting the ethnic totem images were also popular during the festival.

The OCT Yunnan Expo Tourism Group and Weishan County signed an agreement in 2017, aiming to better conserve local ethnic culture, bring together culture and tourism, embrace the all-for-one tourism, and develop Weishan into a destination of fame.

This year’s torch festival served as a good example for fusing culture into tourism, and similar events by the OCT were concurrently held in other Yunnan scenic areas such as the Jiaozi Mountain in Kunming, the Laojun Mountain in Lijiang, the World Dinosaur Valley in Chuxiong, and the Hani Terraced Paddy Fields in Honghe. 

The OCT is a corporation based in south China’s Shenzhen City. In July 2018, the company signed 60 plus culture-tourism projects with the prefectural and county-level governments in Yunnan, totaling a contract value of more than 100 billion yuan. 

Reporting by Li Hengqiang (Yunnan Daily); trans-editing by Wang Shixue