Bota, a student from Kazakhstan who studies at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, placed plates of a handmade traditional Kazakh cuisine called baursak, a type of fried dough often served with tea on special occasions like birthday and wedding, during a food festival held in Siping Subdistrict in Yangpu District on the opening day of the Shanghai Citizens Art Festival.
On March 28, the annual art festival kicked off both online and offline around the city for the first time. This year's launch event featured cultural and tourism activities along the five lakes in the five new cities of Shanghai's outlying areas. They are Yuanxiang Lake in Jiading, Fulin Lake in Songjiang, Xiayang Lake in Qingpu, Jinhai Lake in Fengxian and Dishui Lake in Nanhui.
Meanwhile, there are nearly 1,000 events taking place in the city's cultural venues, commercial complexes, industrial zones, parks and plazas, said Cheng Hongmei, deputy head of the local administration of culture and tourism. It's also the first time the festival is featuring parallel events in Suzhou (Jiangsu Province), Wenzhou (Zhejiang Province) and Wuhu (Anhui Province).
This year marks the seventh food festival in Siping with catering enterprises, restaurants, foreign students and representatives from neighborhood committees in the subdistrict exhibiting their specialty cuisines and the culture behind them.
Bota and other foreign students, from Russia, Japan, Indonesia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Mongolia and Bangladesh — who are studying at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Tongji University and the Shanghai Trade School — brought traditional food from their home countries to the festival.
（From SHINE）
