The 70-minute concert celebrated the first time the national expo has landed in Chongqing and in western China. The expo, themed "Protecting and Inheriting Intangible Cultural Heritage, Sharing a Better Life," will open to the public from November 6 to 10 with exhibitions, hands-on experiences, markets and study tours.

The evening unfolded in two chapters. The first, "Symphony of Mountains and Waters," traced a musical journey from Bayu folk tunes to the world: the Chongqing Symphony Orchestra opened with the jubilant local folk song The Sun Rises with Joy, then swept through The Song of the Volga Boatmen, The Blue Danube, Strauss's Egyptian March and the Brazilian Tico-Tico, before returning home with Setting Sail from Chaotian — a sweeping excerpt from composer Ye Xiaogang's Chongqing Suite depicting the majestic confluence of the two rivers.

The second chapter, "Cultural Pulse of Bayu," turned the spotlight inward. National-level heritage arts took the stage one after another: the raw, thunderous boat trackers' chant of the Chuanjiang River; the witty clapper-talk storytelling of Jinqianban performed by national inheritor Ding Changfu and his disciples; the serene guqin piece Flowing Water from the Nanshan guqin tradition; Sichuan opera's dazzling face-changing; the festive Jielong wind-and-percussion music; a newly composed Sichuan Qingyin aria praising Chongqing's beauty; and the spectacular Tongliang dragon dance, which has toured more than 30 countries. On a side stage, dough-sculpture inheritor Tan Xianhua spent the evening crafting a ten-dish hotpot feast from flour — a playful nod to the city's signature cuisine.

Among the night's most talked-about performers was He Qi, a student from Togo in West Africa studying at Sichuan International Studies University, who has spent the past year learning Jinqianban — Chongqing's traditional clapper art.

"At the beginning, I couldn't get the movements right, and my Chongqing dialect wasn't very standard either," she told iChongqing. "But I kept learning, and now I can speak the dialect and perform the movements. I have gained a deeper understanding of traditional Chinese culture — it is so profound and broad."

He Qi, who first learned Chinese in Togo before winning a scholarship to Chongqing, said she feels grateful to have found good teachers in the city. "When I return to Togo," she said, "I can proudly share this art with the Togolese people."