eNorth(31 March from Hong Kong): In the "2001 Tianjin Week in Hong Kong--Public Show" held in Hong Kong Times Square, the journalists saw the Chinese Lady Wang Yongzhen, who is the famous folk artist and the third generation of Wei's Kite. He told journalists that Wei's Kite will import the system of large-scale manufacture and management instead of the previous little workshop to adapt themselves into the developing direction of Chinese folk arts.

Lady Wei said that it is the first time of her to come to Hong Kong where she took part in the demonstration activities. As being the general Director and Manager of Tianjin Wei's Kite Handicraft Limited, Lady Wei also has another purpose: to find the commercial cooperation in "Tianjin Week in Hong Kong". She believed that manufacturing procedures, materials and theme of folk arts can be changed and the folk arts ought to develop from the traditional foundation. She told that once she went to visit in America and was asked to make an owl kite. In Chinese traditional culture the owl means bad luck, so the kites with style of owl is unbelievable decades years ago. However American friends think the owl is beneficial bird and doesn't mean bad luck in their culture. At last, Lady Wei broke the former rules and made an owl kite for American friends.

During the journalists' interview, Wei was showing her handicrafts in making kites in the public demonstration. She said that she has trained over 40 excellent young artists and let them join in the kite's making. What she has done is to finish her grandfather's last wish that let Wei's kite develop and go to the world. She thought the folk artists have the responsibility to inherit the traditional culture and keep its vitality in future. Commercialization is a direction of developing folk arts. And the most important is that the folk arts will have prospects when the family and workshop management ruled at will are replaced by modern large-scale manufacture-management system. (Zhang Huijun and Wang Wei)