As a part of serial activities by the labour union group of the Center for Astro-geodynamics Research, a wonderful English salon with a local color, titled “Local Fair and Festival Culture in the USA” was held at SHAO on May 19th. Dr. Sarah Bird from the USA joined and shared with us much. Researchers including several international ones attended and made great communications.

With dozens of corlorful pictures, Sarah first guided us to a general view of fair and local festival traditions including county and state fair, local festivals and so on， and then introduced in details the Dogwood-Azalea Festival held annually in Charleston, Missouri which enjoys a long and good reputation. There are many interesting activities in Dogwood-Azalea Festival that attracted us much, such as beauty competition for girls covering the age 3 to 18, fried apple pie eating competition, swine race, quilt show. Everybody, with great interest, enjoyed the amazing traditional festival culture of the USA as if we had been there. And what’s more, researchers from different countries raised questions according to their own interested points and shared their national festival traditions one after another.

Our happy English salon with an exotic atmosphere, is appreciated by all. And we will try our best, with enthusiasm and innovation, to present good salons that can bring everybody knowledge, great communications as well as opportunities for oral English practice.