Deputy Lieutenant Dr. Philip McGarry,
Deputy Speaker Mr. Danny Kennedy,
Mayors and Deputy Mayors,
Mr. Alderman Tom Haire,
Mr. Danny Wong,
Mr. Guan Tiantao,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good evening! Happy Chinese New Year!
It’s a great honor to have all of you here sharing the joy of China’s Spring Festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year of Rooster, which is normally celebrated by about 2 billion people around the world.
Today, we have great pleasure to have Happy Chinese New Year Art Troupe from Jiangsu Province here joining the celebration in NI. It is dispatched by the Chinese Cultural Ministry, hosted by the Chinese Welfare Association NI and supported by Belfast City Council. Here, on behalf of the Chinese Consulate-General in Belfast, I’d like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to all of those for their positive contributions.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This occasion is not only to celebrate the traditional China’s New Year, but also the right time to celebrate people to people friendship, as well as the Golden relationship between China and UK, China and Northern Ireland. It is also the occasion to prospect a better future in the year of 2017.
The past year witnessed great achievements regarding China-NI friendly and win-win collaboration. In the first half, Mr. Zhou Qiang, China's chief justice made a successful visit to NI . In the second half, many high level visits from NI to China, as you know, then the First Minister Arlene Forster successfully visited China and signed friendly cooperation agreement with China’s Liaoning Province, while Minister for Agriculture Michelle McIlveen, Minsiter for Infrastructure Chris Hazzard, NI Assembly delegations also respectively with fruits.During the trip to China by then Lord Mayor of Belfast Arder Carson In May，Belfast and China’s Shenyangupgrated sister-city relationship. And some obvious progress or breakthrough has also been made in the cooperation of trade, culture, education, technologies and so on.
The Jiangsu Art Troupe is composed of many first-class performing artists and has toured from Germany to the UK. I believe, they will make a wonderful performancetoday，andshowcasethetraditional Chinese music, Peking opera and acrobatics．
At last, I wish the performance a complete success, all of you have a pleasant time, all the good luck in the Year of Rooster.
Thank you!