Feature: Two-day festival in Rome celebrates upcoming Chinese "Year of the Monkey"

Local Chinese community held a two-day street festival in the Italian capital over the weekend to mark the upcoming Spring Festival, or the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Feb. 8 this year.

Set up outside the Rome Auditorium, a multi-functional complex dedicated to cultural events, the festival offered varicolored celebrations that drew a large audience from both Italian and Chinese residents living across the country.

Scores of children were attracted to the Shaolin martial art demonstration, with their eyes glued to performers staging standard Kung Fu exercises with a variety of martial art weapons.

"Shaolin Kung Fu works deeply on both your body and soul," 43-year-old performer Simona from Rome told Xinhua.

The woman, who gave her first name only, said that she has been practicing Shaolin Kung Fu for a long time, and her school has routinely performed during celebrations for the Chinese New Year in Rome.

"This discipline helped me sort out my values and priorities in terms of quality of life," she added.

On Saturday evening, a splendid concert was performed by the Guangdong National Orchestra in the Sinopoli hall of the auditorium, followed by an impressive display of fireworks.

During the day, various stands offered people a glimpse of the best Chinese traditional arts and traditions, such as Chinese calligraphy, shadow puppetry, woodblock New Year paintings and Shehuo ladle masks.

The celebrations that also marks the "Year of the Monkey" according to the Chinese zodiac have been a successful opportunity to promote China's modern culture among Italians.

For example, the booth of the Confucius Institute in Rome was crowded with people waiting to have their names, or a nice phrase, written in Chinese logo-grams.

But some of them, like young Mattia, tried to do it themselves. "He has just begun to take a Chinese language class at his primary school, and he seems to be enjoying it very much," Mattia's father, Iuri from Genzano on the outskirts of Rome, told Xinhua.

It was the first time that Iuri has taken his family to attend the Chinese New Year celebrations in Rome. He hoped the event would be promoted more to the Italian people. Meanwhile, his child looked shy and proud, when asked about his new Chinese class. "I like it, we do a lot of nice homework assignments," Mattia said, before writing down the first three Chinese numbers to prove his skills.

The teaching of the Chinese language was overall getting more and more attractive to Italians, according to Zhang Hong, Chinese director of the Confucius Institute at the University in Rome.

Figures showed that an average of 3,000 students have registered for courses provided by the eight Confucius Institutes across Italy on an annual basis.

"We have three different types of students: senior Italians who enjoy learning Chinese for their own pleasure; college students who hope to benefit in term of job opportunities; and a growing number of children," the director explained.

Chinese cuisine was another highlight of the street festival over the weekend.

At one of the stands that displayed the profound traditional Chinese gastronomy, amazing food sculptures representing creatures from legendary Chinese dragon to colorful green-red peacock wowed visiting tourists, regardless of their nationality or age. Endi