The opening ceremony of the cultural festival was launched Wednesday evening and the Confucius Memorial Ceremony will be held Thursday.

Vice chairman of the CPPCC Wang Jiarui proclaimed the festival open, and Gong Zheng, the deputy secretary of CPC Shandong Provincial Committee and governor of Shandong attended and addressed the opening ceremony.

As part of the cultural festival, the 12th UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy announced its winners at the opening ceremony. Three projects from Pakistan, South Africa and Colombia won the prize in 2017.

The UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy, established in 2006, was the first international award named after a Chinese. The prize rewards outstanding people, governments or governmental organizations and non-governmental organizations in works that benefits rural populations and out-of-school youth, particularly girls and women.

A total of 29 people worldwide have been awarded the prize in the past 12 years.

Annual commemorations of Confucius started in 478 BC, the year after his death, while China (Qufu) International Confucius Cultural Festival emerged after 1984. The theme of the festival for this year is telling China's story well through the Confucian culture.