The climax of this year’s International Cultural Festival---Global Youth Innovation Festival was held at Centennial Hall, Peking University (PKU) on the evening of October 25, 2015. A live performance by Wind & Thunder Street Dancing Club marked the prelude of the festival and the dancers’ hot dance to the beat greatly lighted up the atmosphere.
Afterwards, a video clip giving a brief review of the past of PKU was shown on the large screen. In this new century, PKU has the responsibility to pioneer in the process of global youth innovation by creating multiple platforms drawing on both expertise and social resources inside and outside campus. In this regard, this year’s innovation festival embodied the spirit of innovation driven by youth.
Three hosts，Zhang Quanling, Gai Te and Chen Mo entered the stage together announcing the formal start of the Global Youth Innovation Competition Final, which was the major highlight of the festival. Key words of the competition were “scientific innovation” and “cultural creativity”. Twelve participating teams emerged from over 1,200 teams from Asian, American and European continents. The strong lineup of judges included innovation experts, investors, entrepreneurs and foreign ambassadors to China. Gao Song, Vice President of PKU, also attended the festival.
The Final consisted of three rounds. In the first round, six teams out of twelve could move onto the next round. Then, three teams out of previous six would participate in the last round. All teams impressed the audience with their marvelous sense of creativity. In an age of intensified interaction between the east and the west, the “Wine Academy” team from Oxford University intended to establish a global wine platform spreading and promoting wine culture via Internet. The virtual academy was made up of remote education taught by chief educators and an app providing rating data for wine consumers. The team “Perspective: Cosmetics” also developed an Internet-based app offering useful advice to consumers by means of scientific analysis on the chemical components of all sorts of cosmetics. “Collecting Heritage Net”team from Tsinghua University dedicated to setting up the first electronic commercial platform for China’s intangible cultural heritage while “PKU Design” team from PKU hoped to forge a global alliance of creative art designs by cooperating with universities around the world so as to pursue a win-win result.
After three rounds of fierce competitions, the team “Touch of Hope” defeated the other 11 teams and won the first prize. “We want to talk about the 1% of people in the world”, said the team speaker, “they cannot hear or see when they are born, and touch is their only hope to sense the world”. Therefore, members of “Touch of Hope” utilized interactive media in order to train children’s ability to identify color, size and other physical features. “H3 mouthguard” from University of Florida in US, devising a mouth-guide product detecting physical injuries while exercising and “The Journey” promoting the family values of sharing by creating the first family drama written, directed and acted all by family members, won the second prize. The left nine teams won either the third prize or the winning prize.
At the end of the festival, Gao Song delivered a speech congratulating on the success of this year’s International Youth Innovation Festival. He hoped to see more and more young men and women feel the spirit of innovation and make a difference to the world.
Written by Huang Fangyuan
Edited by Wei Yuchen
