China Golden Rooster & Hundred Flowers Film Festival wraps up

Xiamen last week hosted the awards ceremony of the 35th China Golden Rooster Awards and the closing ceremony of the annual China Golden Rooster & Hundred Flowers Film Festival.

Chen Kaige, Hark Tsui and Dante Lam shared the best director award for jointly directing Changjin Lake, which also won the best feature film award. Zhu Yilong and Xi Meijuan garnered the best actor and actress awards. The festival included a variety of events us as film screenings, forums and venture capital conferences.

The publicity department of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee and the China Federation of Literature and Art Circles and China Film Association created the Golden Rooster awards in 1981. Xiamen has hosted the annual event since 2019.

The Xiamen International Ocean Forum kicked off last Thursday at Xiamen International Conference Center. The forum marked the official beginning of this year’s Xiamen International Ocean Week. The weeklong event includes multiple forums, industry exhibitions and a marine cultural carnival.

The Xiamen Chrysanthemum Exhibition opened last week at the Ao Garden in Jimei. The exhibit features 11,000 potted chrysanthemum spanning 140 species. The exhibition runs through the end of the month. Visitors may make reservations via the “集美鳌园景区” WeChat account.

Customs authorities last week announced that the combined value of imports and exports via Xiamen reached 757.6 billion yuan from January through October this year, up by 3.7 percent year-on-year.

Domestic private firms accounted for a plurality of imports and exports at 297 billion yuan, up 12.4 percent year-on-year. The domestic private sector accounted for 39.2 percent of the city's total, followed by state-owned enterprises at 35.6 percent and foreign-invested enterprises at 25.2 percent.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development recently announced that Xiamen made the ministry's list of 24 cities to earn official designation as a pilot city for intelligent construction for the next three years.

Officials said that the city of Xiamen's inclusion on the list is the result of its efforts to promote intelligent construction, to accelerate the integration of new building industrialization and high-end manufacturing and to enable quality development via technological innovation.

Local officials announced last week that the city of Xiamen is now home to 2,287 film and television companies with a total registered capital of 17.4 billion yuan.

In terms of film attendance, Xiamen is home to 62 cinemas boasting a combined total of 410 screens and 55,000 seats. The numbers amount to 2.36 screens per 30,000 residents, well above the national standard of one screen per 30,000 residents. Local box office returns are on track to increase over last year.

The Hurun Research Institute earlier this month released its annual list of China's wealthiest individuals. The list includes 1,305 individuals, each of whom have an estimated wealth of at least five billion yuan.

A total of 17 Xiamen-based entrepreneurs made the list. Ding Shizhong and Ding Shijia from Anta notched an estimated wealth of 45.5 billion yuan and 44 billion yuan. The Ding brothers were followed by Lin Xiucheng and Lin Zhiqiang from Sanan Optoelectronics, each of whom have an estimated wealth of 23.5 billion yuan. Five of Xiamen's richest individuals work for Anta, followed by four individuals who work for Yealink.

The Light Shadow and Color Ink exhibition debuted last week at the Xiamen Literary Federation Art Exhibition Hall. The China Film Foundation and the Xiamen Federation of Literary Art Circles is hosting the event with support from the China Film Association.

The exhibit is a part of the China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival. The exhibition includes more than 130 works by filmmakers and artists. The exhibition theme is entitled Poetic Xiamen, Light Shadow and Color Ink. The exhibition runs through Friday.

Representatives of Xiamen Port announced last week the official opening of its Yichang-Xiamen Port sea-railway combined transportation route.

The route debuted with the export of containerized cargo that originated in Yichang and reached Xiamen Port by train before being loaded onto a ship at the port's Sky Pier for shipment to Busan, the Republic of Korea.

The port provides sea-railway for cargo originating by rail from multiple Chinese cities such as Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan.

Xiamen Port's combined sea-railway combined freight volume in the year through October reached 53,600 TEU, up year-on-year by more than 50 percent.

Xiamen Port officially debuted its Dolphin container liner route earlier this year with the arrival of the MSC Cape III container ship. Xiamen Port currently features 130 foreign trade route, reaching 147 ports in more than 50 countries.

Port authorities said that the Dolphin route and its upcoming sister route, the Seagull, are important components of the Asian shipping network of the shipping giant Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC).

The two new routes will be serviced by 11 container ships servicing ports in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.