Press conference for the first Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Culture and Arts Festival was held on June 18. [Photo by Sun Junjun]

From 2019 on, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Culture and Arts Festival will be held annually by the People's Government of Guangdong Province, Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region.

The initial festival will raise its curtain at the Guangzhou Opera House on the evening of June 24. The theme of the celebration will be "Blooming the Greater Bay Area". Event warm-up activities are already in process. The main event will end in mid-July. Colorful art activities will be held concurrently in Hong Kong and Macao.

Apart from the main venue, parallel venues will be set up in other Greater Bay Area cities including Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, Dongguan, and Zhaoqing. Follow-up activities will last through the end of 2019.

The primary festival consists of over 100 special activities of such events as "Fine Art Tour," "Hong Kong and Macao Excellent Stage Art Show", "Literature Week", "Elementary Student Poetry Season", "Opera Show Week", "Movie Screening Week", "International Music Season", "International Dance Season", "Associated Exhibition of Art Works", "Expo of Arts and Crafts", and "Youth Art Talent Exchange Season".

In addition, the "China Opera Festival 2019" is now underway in Hong Kong, while the "Arts and Cultural Festival Between China and Portuguese-speaking Countries" is also in progress in Macao. These fantastic events will be joined by more than ten other activities that are to be organized in other Pearl River Delta cities.

During this festival, the Zhongshan parallel event will display the colorful cultural life of Zhongshan. This venue will play host to the "Greater Bay Area Stage", "Dreams in the Greater Bay Area" concert which salutes the classics, and the intangible cultural heritage exhibition named "Beauty of Intangible Cultural Heritage".