Beijing's Red Poppies Women's Percussion Band have won a top award for instrumental music, the World Peace Award, during the World Culture Open Competition held from September 12 to 15 in Seoul, South Korea.

Honoured as the World Cultural Olympics, the World Culture Open Competition has attracted artists from more than 60 countries and regions around the world to compete in six categories of three areas, namely artistic culture, social culture and health culture.

Red Poppies performance of three pieces entitled World of Mortals, Rising Dragon and Leaping Tiger and Rolling Walnut, overwhelmed the audience and judges with their superb skills and rich expressiveness, causing them to pocket the top international instrumental music award – the World Peace Award.

The competition has set three awards for music performance, and Red Poppies is the only Chinese group to take part in this contest. There are three other Chinese teams participating in the event's dance contest, two of which have received awards.

Red Poppies Women's Percussion Band is getting more and more active onstage in recent years, both at home and abroad. Besides holding concerts in Beijing, Hong Kong, Macao and other major Chinese cities, they have travelled to perform in Great Britain, the US, Canada, Singapore and South Africa. In February 2004, Red Poppies held a percussion concert in the world-renowned Sydney Opera House and won great applause from the local audience.

In June, 2004, Red Poppies joined the 16th Canada International Dragon Boat Festival as the only foreign artistic group. In August, the band took part in 6th Asia Arts Festival representing the Chinese artistic groups. They also successfully held a concert in Beijing in the same month. Moreover, their first album, World of Mortals, was released five years after the birth of the band.

(CRI.com September 21, 2004)