Beijing Women's Federation

The Happiness Along the Way — 2020 "Most Beautiful Families in Beijing" Cultural Week kicked off on May 11, presenting an online gathering of families and showing power of love during the special period of fighting COVID-19.

 

The event was sponsored by the publicity department of CPC Beijing Municipal Committee, and the Capital Office for Guiding Cultural and Ethical Progress and the Beijing Women's Federation (BWF).

 

Concentrating on the theme "happiness along the way," the five-day event included an online exhibition of family-based art works, an activity to care for families of medical workers who went to assist the fight against COVID-19 in Wuhan, a publicity activity on civilized and healthy family life and online speeches of "most beautiful families in Beijing." The activities encouraged more families to learn from those "most beautiful families" and work together to build a harmonious society and new socialist family culture that advocates patriotism, mutual respect and benevolence.

 

A poster for the family-themed cultural week

 

Highlighting Power of Art in Anti-virus Fight

The online exhibit of cultural works started on May 11. To discover touching stories during the fight against coronavirus and use artistic power to boost confidence, BWF collected cultural works among families in Beijing.

 

More than 1,000 works with rich content and diverse forms were exhibited, including poems, songs, calligraphy and paintings, quyi (a traditional Chinese art form performed as storytelling and singing), handiworks and short videos.

 

Many excellent pieces emerged in the activity. The Mao Zhong family, from Xicheng District, performed a traditional Chinese opera titled Unite for Fighting the Epidemic, Wang Xi's family, from Haidian District, staged a shadow puppetry series show named Anti-epidemic Stories, and Wang Xizi's family, from Mentougou District, created a painting Battle against the Virus. The song Spring Breeze Blows Blooms, composed by Miao Miao's family from Shunyi District, and the Epidemic Prevention Diary created by Guo Mengran's family from Yanqing District also caught people's attention.

 

These works told stories of ordinary families, but inspired more people by paying respect to frontline anti-epidemic fighters, expressing confidence in overcoming difficult times together and conveying positive energy of scientific epidemic containment. Video clips based on these works were displayed online.

 

Advocating Healthy Lifestyle

During a publicity activity featuring civilized and healthy family life on May 13, Han Dong's family, announced as one of the municipal-level "most beautiful families" of the first quarter this year, shared a green lifestyle through a vlog. The activity intends to encourage more families to learn from the "most beautiful families" and live low-carbon and healthy lives. Han Dong and his family members created a song, Unite to Fight Coronavirus, to show respect for medical workers. In the vlog, the family set an example by using public chopsticks and spoons while dining together, observing the rule of one-meter spacing in line (to wait in line at an interval of one meter), and showing how to avoid producing waste if possible and to conduct garbage sorting. The vlog will be put on various new media platforms.

 

In addition, an HTML 5 product and an online garbage sorting game have been released to gain public support for the civilized and healthy family lifestyle.

 

Telling Stories of Medics' Families

On May 12, the International Nurses Day, the online activity A Family Photo for You was held to send greetings to families of doctors and nurses who worked in Hubei, the hardest hit region of the epidemic in China.

 

In the preparatory stage, reporters visited families of Liu Yuhang, Wang Junshan and Zhang Dan. Liu Yuhang and her mother are both medical workers and they fought COVID-19 in different places. Wang Junshan is a police officer and his wife is a nurse who went to Hubei for assistance. Zhang Dan, a nurse, and her husband both worked hard to fight the virus. The organizers presented the families with creative portraits of their members and took family photos for them.

 

A popular poem, two letters between a mother and her daughter, a donation from a Party member's family… Cao Yuan's family used special ways to show confidence in winning the battle against COVID-19 and there are many families alike. On May 14, the online meeting of "most beautiful families in Beijing" was held on app Himalaya FM, during which four families shared their stories about fighting COVID-19.

 

Attendees included Cao Yuan's family, a representative of grassroots workers, Zhang Chen's family, who were part of the medical staff from hospitals designated for COVID-19 treatment in Beijing, Zhao Wei's family who used art to fight the epidemic, and Ye Caide's family, a representative of families whose members assisted the fight against virus in Hubei.

 

To encourage more families to learn from and be "most beautiful families," an online lecture was held on the International Day of Families, May 15. Cao Jie and Ruan Zheng,  representatives of families of doctors and policemen, grassroots Party member Wang Danning, community worker Zhang Yanping and Liu Yuhang talked about their stories of sticking to their posts to provide medical treatment, implementing prevention and control measures or resuming work and production.

 

During the event, the "alliance of 'most beautiful families'" was established to encourage families to take part in volunteer activities with their expertise and passion for public welfare. The "alliance of units that support 'most beautiful families'" was also established to form a mechanism of rewarding model families which would make the families have stronger sense of honor and responsibility. The event was live-streamed on Beijing Time, Iqiyi, Baidu, tv.sohu.com, Qianlong.com and yizhibo.com.

 

 

Making families safe and stable is an important task for maintaining social stability and controlling the epidemic. The BWF has actively incorporated its efforts into the capital's epidemic prevention since the outbreak, with an eye on family education and tradition. The 80 "most beautiful families in Beijing" selected in the first quarter of 2020 demonstrated the important role of family units in grassroots social governance. The cultural week promoted stories of model families through various online platforms to enhance the influence of those families and encouraged more people to learn virtues and take actions, leading their family members to take on responsibilities in promoting the city's development and social harmony during the regular epidemic prevention and control period.