Foreign news

Xi Jinping checks people’s livelihood in Guiyang ahead of the Chinese New Year

Published

4 years ago

February 4, 2021

Xiaonian Festival is often regarded as the last special day before the Chinese New Year. Falling on the 23rd or 24th day of the last month of the traditional Chinese lunar calendar, it usually marks the countdown to the Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival.

This year, Xiaonian falls on Thursday. To ensure a stable and abundant market supply for the Chinese New Year, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited a supermarket and a local community in Guiyang City, southwest China’s Guizhou Province, to inspect their preparations ahead of the holiday.

Chinese people like buying necessities in bulk as the New Year approaches. The coming of Xiaonian rings the bell of a final push to the Chinese New Year, thus, a smooth and orderly operation of market supply is particularly important.

A visit to ordinary people

In the Heli fresh food supermarket, Xi checked the supply of food and other daily necessities. He also learned the price level there to make sure all the goods are affordable for ordinary people.
He then visited Jinyuan Community in Guanshanhu District to check the operation of community services and their influence on residents’ daily lives.

After seeing residents creating paper-cuts for the festival, Xi joined them and extended his warm wishes by writing a traditional Spring Festival couplet.

Both paper-cutting and writing couplets are Chinese New Year customs. Paper-cutting works are used to express well wishes, and are often applied to windows as decorations. Spring Festival couplets are often written with Chinese calligraphy. Pasting on both sides of a door, it is believed that the sincere wishes and New Year greetings written on the couplets will bring good luck to the whole family.

It marked the second day of Xi’s visit to Guizhou Province. on the previous day he visited people from the Miao ethnic group in Qianxi County.

A nine-year tradition

The pre-Spring Festival visit is not a surprise. For nine consecutive years, Xi has made it a tradition to visit ordinary people, especially the disadvantaged groups, ahead of the most important holiday on the Chinese calendar.

In 2020, Xi visited Simola Wa Village in southwest China’s Yunnan Province and joined a family of the Wa ethnic group in making rice cakes and beat a wooden drum three times as a local ritual to bless the coming year.

In 2019, Xi made an appearance in the hutong neighborhoods of central Beijing and dropped in on an express delivery station where he praised the hard work of deliverymen, saying they were “busy as bees” to bring convenience to people’s lives.

Xi may visit a different place every year, but wherever he goes, his care for the livelihood of ordinary people never changes.

(Cover: Chinese President Xi Jinping visits a supermarket in Guiyang City, Guizhou Province, February 4, 2021. /Xinhua)

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Foreign news

French Envoy Seeks Collaboration With NAN To Boost Seamless Relationship

Published

2 months ago

February 5, 2025

The Gleamer

The new French envoy to Nigeria, Marc Fonbaustier, on Wednesday called for collaboration with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) toward strengthening the mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries.

Fonbaustier, who is the French ambassador to Nigeria and the ECOWAS, made the call when he paid a courtesy visit to Malam Ali Muhammad Ali, NAN’s Managing Director, in Abuja.
The ambassador said that his purpose of visiting was to pay tribute to the MD, and to seek collaboration in three areas with a view to promoting stronger, seamless and fruitful partnership between both countries.

He added that Nigeria and its people were hospitable, especially to the foreigners and ambassadors alike.

He added that Nigeria was a country with so much energy, strength, stamina and so many talents.

In Nigeria, with the population of this size, it is inevitable that the elites of the country are very outstanding, “and there may be a Franco/Nigeria moments now”, he jokes.

According to him, France and Nigeria can collaborate more and learn from each other.
“I could feel it particularly during the state visit of President Bola Tinubu which took place in November 2024.

“I was there and I could see the intensity, the strength and the scope of the partnership, and I am here to scale up that partnership in all sectors.

“I am coming here for three reasons, first, to pay a tribute to the NAN MD and his team for the quality of this agency. We can testify that the contents that you publish are very factual, and also very well set up and structured.

“You do fact checking and you really do try to provide the community with quality information. I think, as a French ambassador, I can recognise that as part of a living democracy,” he said.

The French ambassador said the second reason for the visit was to intimate the NAN MD of France’s eagerness to go on partnership with NAN saying he hoped for assurance of a seamless, fluid and easy relationship.

He said that his third reason stemmed from his observation that NAN recently signed some partnership framework agreements with Egypt and China, saying “it may be time to think of balancing this partnership with others”.

“Especially with French, and to talk with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to see if there’s ground for a closer relationship between NAN and AFP.

“Which is also a recognised agency like yours, and I bet you the sky will be the limit to the collaboration, ’’he said.

Responding, the NAN MD informed the envoy that the agency was African’s biggest news content provider on account of its size.

Ali gave the envoy a little details of the agency’s operation and its outreach, saying “as our continent’s biggest news content provider, we have offices nationwide and in selected African countries.

“We have offices in countries such as South Africa, Cote d’ivoire, Addis Ababa, and then we have offices also beyond the shores of Africa. We have in New York and we are the only resident wire service in the United Nations.

“At a time in the past, the agency had 11 foreign offices, including Moscow, and presently, we are trying to re-open some of our shut offices, especially in London.
“We value partnership and understanding that we have with similar news organisation such as Reuters and, incidentally, we have a long standing relationship with AFP which you just raised.
“I know for years we have exchange of news between NAN and AFP but it’s a cooperation that we will like to strengthen and with your greater involvement,’’ he said.

The MD commended the ambassador for reaching out and engaging with some Nigerians communities to douse the tension of the allegation made by the Nigeriens.

He also lauded the envoy’s leadership and visibility to Nigeria and the ECOWAS, “which has helped to douse the perception and misconceptions about France, especially in the Sahel”.
“I think you have helped to reverse some of this perceptions. I thank you for the kind words that you said about the agency and about our management.

“We also see partnership as an important tool in checking the spread of fake news.
“We’ve seen instances where fake news has done great deal of damage, and with the coming of social media it has done even greater damage.

“Our country is facing a lot of challenges, one of which is the increasing insecurity, and the social media has been used by those who do not want to see our country to prosper,” Ali said.
He further said that NAN was a credible news agency that always fact check to correct the wrong narratives by those who are in the business of causing troubles.

He also told the envoy that the agency has its content in the Nigerian indigenous languages, starting with Hausa and it would proceed to Yoruba and Igbo languages later, “then later in future to French.

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