Easy to identify the look of eastern breeze，variety of colors created by spring. Apart from the wind and beauty, what makes people feel the vitality of spring is the MEET IN BEIJING Arts Festival, which has solidly walked through 17 years and has become an indispensable cultural life of the capital people in spring.

From April 27 to May 31, the 17th MEET IN BEIJING Arts Festival will come in time with a more mature posture, a broader pattern and a more eclectic mind to absorb the outstanding arts of different countries to gather in Beijing. There will be 23 outstanding performing arts groups from 21 countries and regions, more than 400 Chinese and foreign artists dedicatedly bringing the audience more than 60 theater and 20 outdoor performances, a number of art exhibitions and public art education projects.

The 17th MEET IN BEIJING Arts Festival is themed on promoting cultural exchanges between countries along and related to the "One Belt & One Road" (hereinafter referred to as “B&R”). Coinciding with the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation held in Beijing in May, many projects of the festival will become effective echo. This year, among all the groups invited to participate in the festival, more than 50% are from countries along the "B&R" and the content and quality has reached the peak in recent years.

Hungry and Belarus, the two important countries, actively respond to the “B&R”, respectively with their classic programs the ExperiDance Production's large-scale dance drama “The Legend of Sissi” and the National Academic Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theater's ballet “Swan Lake” for the opening and closing of the festival. In addition, there will be the magnificent epic drama “White Deer Plain” by the Beijing People's Art Theater, depicting Wei River Plain’s changes for 50 years, the State Small Theatre of Vilnius’s drama “The Mother” with a unique artistic style and the Polish Folk Music Concert “The Spring of Warsaw” by the DAGA DANA band and so on. The festival takes Shaanxi in the “White Deer Plain” as a starting point, and connects a shining “B&R” art series of multicultural programs. The Art Festival also sets up exhibition activities with the theme of “B&R” in the sectors of Pop Music Festival and Youth Art Education, focusing on injecting cultural nourishment into building a new type of international relations for “B&R”.

"MEET IN BEIJING" is also a vibrant frontier art position; the innovative spiritual core has become an endless stream of power for the art festival. The Super Cello Festival, sponsored by Professor ZHU Yibing, Director of the Cello Teaching and Research Section at the Central Conservatory of Music, will invite world-renowned cellists and bands to perform 13 concerts and 12 masterclasses in the form of "Classical Fan and Foreign Fair"; the large doll stage drama “Papa's Time Machine” by visual artist MA Liang co-created with Hungary and German artists will bring the audience a new visual experience and tearful mind care.

The festival is divided into six sections of music, dance, drama, exhibition, outdoor music carnival and sub-festivals, in which famous artists, bands and masterpieces get together; the forms are more diverse; the content is also more abundant. Chinese tradition and contemporary fine masterpieces and the essence of the foreign culture and the arts around the world, here contest and blend each other.

The interactive percussion music by Canadian BAM percussion band will let the audience experience a comedy trip. Large concerts separately organized by two popular stars of Chinese pop music - Taiwanese singer Fan Fan and Hong Kong singer Deng Ziqi (G.E.M.), will become a popular choice for this year's popular concert. In addition, Pop Music Festival, with a good reputation of the country's outdoor music festival brand, will fully return, in which the music style will cover the cable, folk, pop, rock and roll, etc. And the Mexican band “Belanova”, the Russian band “Oligarkh”, Haitian band “Vox Sambou” will inspire the whole performance. Following the "China-Latin America and Caribbean 2016 Year of Culture Exchange ", this year's Latin American Arts Season has also served again, to send the Latin American and Caribbean whirlwind to several places.

"MEET IN BEIJING", bearing its original purpose in mind, always aims to create the festival for people via initiatives of adhering to provide free performances or with low fares and to hold square performances, lectures and workshops in the community and universities, whose public welfare effect continues to show. The drama “To Kill A Mockingbird” by the University of Montana as a program of the campus performance series of the festival, will provide a chance for the Chinese college students to appreciate this Western modern classic works.

From the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center to the Capital Gymnasium, the National Library Arts Center, the Capital Theater, and then to the New Tsinghua Auditorium of Tsinghua University, Sunrise Concert Hall of Beihang University, 798 Arts Zone..."MEET IN BEIJING", waving magic wand, spreads the breath of art to Beijing and the country's many cultural space, bringing endless vitality and surprise for these places. Embrace the spring, but also embrace art! "MEET IN BEIJING" makes the city more beautiful.