Cape Town Chinese Year 'plays a wonderful symphony of harmonious coexistence between cultures'

The highly anticipated Cape Town Chinese New Year Celebration was grandly unveiled on January 25, 2025 at the Amphitheater V&A waterfront Cape Town. 

As an annual cultural feast for the Cape Town Chinese community, this year's Chinese New Year is full of "New Year flavour". The collaboration between Chinese Community of Cape Town and local artists  is exciting and diverse. Traditional dances, modern dances, solo singing, choir singing, as well as Sichuan opera face changing and martial arts,  especially traditional lion dance that came from Foshan Chancheng brought a soul stirring artistic enjoyment to thousands of  audiences.

The Spring Festival is a very important  holiday for family reunion and a link between history and the future. It carries the longing of overseas Chinese for their homeland, their concern for their loved ones, and their beautiful expectations for the new year.

Year 2025 is the first Chinese New Year after UNESCO recently acknowledging the Spring Festival as an Intangible Cultural Heritage, global fascination with this tradition has risen substantially.

In Cape Town, Chinese communities and local artists are celebrating the Spring Festival  together at the Amphitheater of V&A waterfront for the third consecutive year. The Chinese Spring Festival, which embodies the values of pursuit of peace, harmony of the Chinese nation and the world, is moving towards the world's multicultural stage with its unique charm.

Consul General of the PRC in Cape Town, You Wenze, together with Western Cape MEC for Infrastructure Tertuis Simmers, Mayoral Committee member in the City of Cape Town Alderman Theresa Uys, attended the celebration of Chinese New Year and delivered enthusiastic speeches. Western Cape Premier Alan Wendy, City of Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, and Western Cape Provincial Commissioner of SAPS, Thembisile Patekile sent New Year's greetings to the Chinese community via video.

The audience pondered the Spring Festival culture in the strong atmosphere of the Spring Festival. The Shaolin Kung Fu Institute of South Africa, Ilingomso Lethu Traditional Dancers,Red Dazzlers Production also contributed by presenting traditional South African Zulu dance, Xhosa dance, and Kung Fu displays. This not only added a multicultural touch to the Chinese New Year celebration, but also transformed it from being solely a Chinese community event to an inclusive stage for cultural diversity.

Traditional Chinese medicine, calligraphy, intangible cultural heritage rubbings and other cultural stalls next to the Amphitheater are crowded with people, playing a wonderful symphony of harmonious coexistence between Chinese  and Africa cultures. 

Foshan Lion Dance, as a treasure of Lingnan culture, was specially invited to celebrate the Chinese New Year Celebration in  Cape Town. The Foshan lion dance guidance team brought a unique Chinese New Year performance to Cape Town.Let the audience in Cape Town feel the lively atmosphere of the Chinese Spring Festival, and let Chinese traditional culture slowly take root here.

A group of local artists from Afri-Can Performance Academy also brought their choreographed dance "Left Hand Pointing to the Moon". The music plays, with familiar melodies that are ethereal and melodious, as if traveling from the East connects China and South Africa closely, so that the people can jointly write a new chapter of friendship in the cultural blend.

Every performance of the entire program was highly distinctive, with the actors fully engaged and the live audience enthusiastically interacting. Applause and cheers echoed one after another. Some opened their cameras to take photos and videos, adding a joyful festive atmosphere to the event.

Local residents said the Chinese community is really contributing substantially to diversify and enrich our country's culture and especially Cape Town.