The 4th Red Leaf Festival was launched by Tianjin University on Oct 29 at the Feng Jicai Research Institute of Literature and Art, gathering students to appreciate the beauty of autumn and create works of art inspired by the season.

Held every autumn since 2019, the event is an opportunity to inspire students to discover, create and enjoy beauty through literature and art.

In front of the bronze statue of poet Xu Zhimo, students performed on stage, reading poetry and playing music. The poems were the best works collected during the Red Leaf Festival in the past four years, written by students from different schools, many of them science and engineering majors.

There were performers playing the guitar, the piano, the erhu, a bamboo flute ensemble, a violin duet, among many musical performances. The Peiyang Chorus sang three songs adapted from Xu Zhimo's poems, plus two compositions by Johannes Brahms and George Friedrich Handel.

The institute is preparing for the next festival, collecting theme music and lyrics of “Song of the Red Leaves” from teachers and students.  The excellent works will be presented in a themed exhibition in next year's festival.

At the ceremony, Feng Jicai, a leading author born in Tianjin, and Yang Xianjin, the secretary of the Party Committee of Tianjin University, jointly unveiled the logo of "Song of the Red Leaves".

In addition, it also invited Professor Ren Baoping, the honorary director of Art Education Center of Tianjin University and other teachers from the center as the artistic advisers of the event to provide professional guidance.

Last year, students wrote down their wishes and goals on cards, put them into envelopes and dropped them into three mailboxes - "2022", "2023" and "2024”. At the event, students received the letters of “2022”to check their progress and see if their wishes have come true.

In addition, students stopped by the red leaf wall to appreciate photographs and poetry, as well as searched for the other surprises of autumn in all corners of the institute.