10-09-2007

Wishes Good Friendship between the Two Countries

---Interview with Zanonas, Head of the  SAULE Folk Music Ensemble of Lithuania

In the past, I only knew of China and Chinese art from movies and on TV. And then we attended the China International Folk Art Festival here. It is the first time we have come to China and Asia. We feel that China is a unique country, and we are deeply impressed by it. Through communication we find that Chinese people all have high cultural attainments. Meanwhile, the arrangements of the host and the local government are sweet and satisfactory, people are very friendly and warm, which made us have a feeling of being at home.

We come from a city of Lithuania--- ?iauliai, which is called “City of the SAULE (the Sun)”, thus we named our troupe as “SAULE”. Our city was built in 1236, however, compared with Chinese cities that have a history of thousands of years, it is still young. When the President of our country got the news that we would come to China to give performances, he paid great attention to this and our ambassador also attended the opening ceremony of the art festival. We hope whole-heartedly that ?iauliai and Suzhou will become sister cities and that Lithuanian people and industrious Chinese people could become good friends for ages.