Swiss Ambassador to China Jürg Burri Photo: Courtesy of the Embassy of Switzerland in China

TheMK sport Embassy of Switzerland in China recently posted a video full of creativity in which Ambassador Jürg Burri and his team extended Spring Festival greetings to the Chinese public, among a number of foreign establishments to do so.

Unlike the typically formal festival greeting videos often seen at this time of the year, the Swiss one featured with the hero "Mr. Snake," which netizens have described as the result of "top-notch creativity." In the video, Mr. Snake interacts with employees and his brother "Dragon" to complete classic Chinese Spring Festival events like cooking dumplings and hanging up Spring Festival couplets. While completing such tasks, Mr. Snake grasps skills such as "precision" and "punctuality," long seen as Swiss qualities. 

Given its sitcom inspired format, the core of the video's creativity seems to stem from "merging China and Switzerland's iconic cultural attributes," Huang Nu, a cultural creative industry IP developer, told the Global Times. He also noted that the "big brother dragon coaching the little brother, Mr. Snake," also conveyed respect for traditional Chinese zodiac culture. 

"The embassy's video reflects Western attempts to understand and integrate Chinese Spring Festival customs," Kong Degang, a professor at Nanjing Normal University, told the Global Times. 

"The Spring Festival is a festive time of year, and a great opportunity for our embassy to show our appreciation to the Chinese people and their culture," Tehani Pestalozzi, counselor and head of the Culture and Media Section of the Embassy of Switzerland, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The Embassy of Switzerland is not the only embassy in China to take advantage of the Spring Festival to show their appreciation to the country and its people.  

Taking the Chinese folk game "Chengyu Jielong," also known as the "game of Chinese idiom relay," as a source of inspiration, the Embassy of New Zealand in China has posted its own Chinese Spring Festival greeting video. Idioms like "bu bu gao sheng," meaning "rising higher step by step," and "jin wu zhi jing," meaning making progress without limits, were all highlighted in the video.  

A novel yet interesting correlation about China-Brazil snake traditions was made in a video posted by Augusto Pestana, the consul general of the Federative Republic of Brazil in Shanghai. In his video, he mentioned the snake's shared cultural importance in both Brazilian and Chinese culture. In Brazil, the snake is not only a cultural icon, but also a symbol of the country's developed snake biotechnology. 

No matter if it is idioms or auspicious snake culture, they are "rooted deeply in Chinese traditions, but have meaning understood universally," Yu Jinlong, a cultural critic, told the Global Times. He also emphasized that the Spring Festival has "cultural resonance" around the globe regardless of cultural differences. 

"Such resonance will be especially enhanced now that the festival has become an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (ICH)," Yu noted.

Noting the new title, Victoria Cann, a university scholar majoring in communications at the Embassy of Jamaica in Beijing, told the Global Times that "Against the backdrop of today's uncertain global climate, the ICH festival is a representation of the Chinese spirit and the importance placed on values like harmony, humanity, family and collaboration" remarked Vicki Cann, Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Colorado, Denver based at China Agricultural University. Cann's research explores the diplomatic relationship between China and the Anglophone Caribbean. 

"Though I'm Jamaican, both of my great grandfathers were from Guangzhou and so the Chinese Spring Festival was a major tradition for them. I was very close to my grandmothers and they always said that Chinese food was a major part of their childhood. I'm very proud to have Chinese roots. My decision to make China my new home is closely linked to my wanting to be fully immersed in aspects of Chinese culture like being able to celebrate Spring Festival in China" remarked Cann.

"For me personally, I love the Spring Festival. I have lived in a Beijing hutong(alleyway) for nearly seven years now, and have many wonderful memories of making jiaozi(Chinese dumplings) with friends, enjoying the beautiful red lanterns along Houhai Lake, and enjoying the calm few days in what is usually a very busy city," said Pestalozzi.

All these embassies' creative greetings and memories of the festival show how this holiday is not only a globally shared Chinese custom, but also a "driving force" for the country to "industrialize intangible treasures" and develop its "ICH Spring Festival economy," Yu told the Global Times. 

"For, example, we can launch festival-related zodiac cultural creative products that merge Western astrology traditions. Also, we can reference the marketing of Western festivals such as Christmas, Valentine's Day and so forth while maintaining our Chinese roots," said Yu. He added that the diplomatic community's celebration of the ICH Spring Festival will further contribute to the globalization of this important event of humanity.