Our teachers, students and families at China's embassy open day: "The Scent of Zongzi Meets Midsummer"

Ambassador Zhou Limin: "This gift is very precious" | Notes from the open day at China's embassy in Sweden

On 19 June the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival coincided with Swedish Midsummer, and China's embassy in Sweden held an open day under the title "The Scent of Zongzi Meets Midsummer", with a special invitation to teachers, students and families from the Chinese schools in Sweden.

In his speech, Ambassador Zhou Limin explained carefully how the Dragon Boat Festival came about and the customs that go with it, offered his greetings for both festivals, and urged the children of Chinese heritage to nurture their ties to family and homeland and to be small emissaries for friendship between China and Sweden.

The day was divided into a performance stage, cultural experiences, a hanfu photo station, technology and innovation, garden games and a food area — traditional Chinese style and modern technology side by side, and life and bustle everywhere. The children spread out across the areas: writing with a brush, tying Chinese knots, folding paper zongzi, dressing in hanfu for photographs, gathering round the robot dog and the robots to experience the technology, playing pitch-pot and ring toss, and collecting stamps for the four seasons. Everyone was thoroughly absorbed and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

We at Xingzhi School had prepared a piece as well. Teacher Chen Bingxuan of the guzheng class performed on stage, and the beautiful sound drew a good number of guests, Chinese and Swedish alike. Our student Gu Ruisen is only eight this year, but stepped calmly onto the stage and recited the whole of "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion" from memory, fluently and with real assurance.

Before setting out, thirty-eight of the school's students worked together to complete a "gift" for the ambassador. It included letters in the children's own handwriting — some describing what several years of learning Chinese has meant to them, others putting questions they were curious about and expressing their hopes for friendship between China and Sweden. There were also many drawings on themes such as a peaceful Dragon Boat Festival, China–Sweden friendship and traditional culture, and several students had painted portraits of the ambassador and his wife in different styles. It had everything, really.

During a break I handed the collection to Ambassador Zhou myself. He and his wife were surprised by a whole book full of the children's work, leafed through it there and then, and praised how carefully the children had drawn and how sincere the handwriting was. The ambassador said particularly to Yang Guanda, head of consular and overseas Chinese affairs, that the gift was very precious and that he would look after it himself, and he asked me to pass on his thanks to all the children.

It was a large event with over four hundred people, and the embassy staff were not many — yet everything was thought through, and you could see their effort everywhere. Consul Xu, responsible for registration at the entrance, checked guests in and handed out tickets for the garden games while patiently answering questions, busy from beginning to end and smiling throughout. Consul Dan handled both hosting and logistics, running back and forth to coordinate, and only once the whole event had finished did she get to eat. Midway through the performance a gust of wind blew the stage backdrop askew; two members of staff stood quietly behind it, holding it up the entire time, until every item on the programme was done.

As far as I can recall, this is the first time the embassy has held an event on this scale specifically for the Chinese schools and young people of Chinese heritage, which shows that Ambassador Zhou and the embassy staff keep the cultural growth of these children abroad very much in mind. The children came away with a great deal that day: many won craft and design prizes in the draw, everyone had freshly wrapped hot zongzi, and the teachers and students who took the stage showed Chinese arts to the full. Everyone arrived happy and went home satisfied.

Standing in the embassy, with familiar Chinese things everywhere you look and the sound of home in your ears, that steadying sense of "coming home" is hard to put into words. On the big lawn, Chinese and Swedish children played together, trying calligraphy, handicrafts and folk music with no distance between them, culture alone providing the ground for a simple, genuine friendship.

The nearly seventy of us from Xingzhi, teachers and students, gained a memory entirely our own on the day the Dragon Boat Festival met Midsummer. The children experienced the culture of their homeland close up, the care that thirty-eight children created together is now kept safe by the ambassador, and the sound of the guzheng and of young voices reciting remains in the embassy courtyard. These small, warm pictures will stay with us a long while.

(The author is the principal of Xingzhi School. Photographs by Teacher Cathy Gou and Mr Zong Jinbo. Some images come from the official channels of China's embassy in Sweden.)