Beijing's holds arts festival for children

The Gateway to Music festival, one of Beijing's biggest arts festival for children which has been staged during the summer vacation, since 1995, is set to end in the next few days.

This year's event, which will end on Aug 31, had camps teaching Western classical music, traditional Chinese opera, traditional Chinese folk dance and calligraphy, as well as live performances and public lectures, at the Forbidden City Concert Hall.

A camp on poetry-reading, attracted over 100 students from around the country. Among them were 12 primary school students from Jiangxi province who came to the capital for the first time, and took the stage to read Tang dynasty poet Wang Changling's poem Chu Sai. Other highlights of the festival were Song Fei, a veteran erhu player, teaching the erhu to over 100 students, aged from six to 62, at the four-day erhu summer camp during the festival.