Wenzhou, in East China's Zhejiang province, recently launched an online summer camp for the city's school-age descendants currently residing abroad. The camp aims to help the young people to learn more about their ancestral culture as they stay quarantined at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wenzhou has long been one of the greatest sources of overseas Chinese: nearly 700,000 Wenzhou-bred business people and workers are now residing in 131 foreign countries and regions.

During the summer camp, prominent experts will give five live-streamed presentations on the city's intangible cultural heritage, including Ou Opera, paper-cutting, martial arts, embroidery, and local cuisines, as well as five live-streamed lectures on the city's dialect, tourism, history, and culture.

The launch ceremony and the first of the camp's presentations were held at a media center at Qidu Island in the north of Wenzhou, on July 31. The live broadcast of the event attracted 150,000 audience members, including Wenzhou-descended school children currently living in some 20 countries and regions, such as Italy, France, and the Netherlands.

The speaker for the first presentation was deputy director of the Wenzhou Ou Opera Art Institute Fang Ru, who, as an Ou Opera actor, was a recipient of the Plum Blossom Award (the highest theatrical award in China). To achieve the best learning outcomes among the teenage audience, Fang invited to the stage the institute's opera artists, who gave exciting live performances as Fang gave vivid interpretations of the action.

Professional artists from the Wenzhou Ou Opera Art Institute perform Ou Opera on site. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Fang Ru leads a teenage audience member to the stage and teaches her the different types of characters in the Ou Opera. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]