Sharing cultures, building connections

Sister cities in China and Germany strive together to keep old houses alive and promote urban development

In a traditional courtyard, sunlight streamed through carved wooden windows, falling onto a table covered with bamboo strips and colorful paper. The courtyard belongs to a workshop in Hongcun, a historic village at the foot of Huangshan Mountain in East China's Anhui province.

At the workshop for the intangible cultural heritage, where experts impart skills for making fish lanterns, a mayor from Germany carefully inserted the final bamboo frame into the lantern's body.