The White Horse Temple in Luoyang in Henan Province (left), the Terracotta warriors in Xi'an in Shaanxi Province (middle) and the night view of Sanya in Hainan Province. (File photo)
All shining with great cultures and splendid futures, three cities in China -- Xi'an, Luoyang and Sanya -- are competing for the East Asian City of Culture for 2019.
Since only one will be chosen, which city will prevail?
The final review saw the competition among the three candidates in Beijing on Friday morning.
Governmental representatives from each city got together and tried to best present the beauty of their beloved cities through speeches and videos.
Each city had a spokesman answering three to four questions from the review committee about the city's culture and tourism development.
Sanya was proud of its tourism and international impact. Xi'an boasted its rich cultural heritage and fast cultural development in recent years. Luoyang, as another historical city closely connected with ancient Chinese culture, also presented its great success in promoting intangible cultural heritage.
"For this year, as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China was officially inaugurated in China, a new chapter in the integration of culture and tourism has been launched," said Liu Deyou, the former vice-cultural minister and a member from the review committee, while addressing the final review meeting.
"The annual East Asia Cultural City selection and related cultural exchange activities can help bridge Chinese culture and the world."
After about two hours of speeches and Q&As, Xi'an got the highest marks among the three.
Yet the final result will not be released until August, according to Xie Jinying, director of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Bureau for External Cultural Relations.
The winner will see a series of cultural activities with two other cities that have been selected as the 2019 City of Culture of East Asia: Icheon, South Korea, and Toshima-ku, Japan.
As part of a joint activity by the neighbors and leading forces in East Asia -- China, Japan and South Korea -- the East Asia City of Culture program was first proposed by the cultural ministers of the three countries during the third ministerial conference in Nara, Japan, in January 2011.
It aims to promote cultural diversity in East Asia, and to allow the three countries to foster mutual understanding and a sense of unity in the region.
China's other East Asian Cultural Cities in recent years include Ningbo from Zhejiang Province in 2016, Changsha from Hunan Province in 2017, and Harbin from Heilongjiang Province in 2018.
