Pakistani students in China have won first prize at the 7th International Culture and Arts Festival of Sichuan Agricultural University, where student teams from 19 countries presented their national cultures through food, handicrafts and traditional dress, according to reports by Global News Pakistan and The Daily CPEC.
The festival was held on 5 November 2026 at the university’s Chengdu campus in Sichuan province. Each national team ran exhibition stalls and took part in a traditional costume runway show, and the Pakistani team’s presentation was judged the best of the festival, earning the team the first prize.
The Tenth Teaching Building at Sichuan Agricultural University in Chengdu, where the festival brought together student teams from 19 countries.
Photo: 猫猫的日记本, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
How Pakistani students in China presented their culture
The Pakistani food stall served dishes that visitors could taste for themselves, including biryani, chana chaat and sweet kheer, along with Pakistani black tea. For the costume presentation, the team presented dress traditions from across the country, covering Punjab, Sindh, Gilgit and Saraiki culture, so that students from other countries could see how varied Pakistan’s own traditions are.
Kamran Javed, a Pakistani master’s student at the university, was part of the team. “The response from Chinese students and international friends has been encouraging,” he said, adding that the team felt proud to represent Pakistan and to share its cuisine, dress and traditions with students from around the world.
Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, hosts a large international student community, and events of this kind are where many Chinese students meet Pakistan’s culture for the first time: not through headlines, but through a plate of biryani, a cup of black tea and a conversation at a stall. That is also why the costume runway matters. A single presentation that moves from Punjab to Sindh and from Gilgit to Saraiki dress shows the audience that Pakistan is not one tradition but several, living side by side.
The festival was organised by the university’s Office of International Cooperation and International College together with the Student International Exchange Center, and the university’s own report of the event was published on 8 November. Pakistani students have taken part before: students from the Islamia University of Bahawalpur joined the fifth edition of the same festival at Sichuan Agricultural University in April 2024.
Now in its seventh edition, the festival is one of the university’s set-piece international events of the year, built around a simple idea: each country’s students present the food, objects and clothing of home, and visitors move from stall to stall tasting and comparing. That format rewards teams that prepare seriously, because judges and visitors alike can sample a biryani, handle a handicraft and watch a costume presentation within the same visit. Both Pakistani reports of this year’s result draw on the university’s own coverage of the festival, and both record the same outcome, a first prize for the Pakistani team’s overall presentation.
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Part of a wider run of student success in China
The Sichuan result adds to a growing list of achievements by Pakistani students in China. Earlier this year, Pakistani students won second prize at the Belt and Road Business Elite Challenge, and a Pakistani AI student received the ‘River Messenger’ honor for environmental work. The two countries have also signed 11 education agreements covering youth skills and exchanges, which should bring still more Pakistani students to Chinese campuses.
Festivals like the one at Sichuan Agricultural University ask for something different from examination success: they reward how well students can present their own country’s food, clothing and customs to an international audience. On that test, the Pakistani team came first among 19 countries, a result that reflects well on the students and on the welcome they received in Chengdu.
Sources
- Global News Pakistan: Pakistani Students Win at Sichuan Festival
- The Daily CPEC: Pakistani Students Win First Prize at Sichuan Festival
- Featured photo: Bert Andone, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Body photo: 猫猫的日记本, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Umar Farooq is the founder and editor of Good News Pakistan. An engineer by profession and a writer by passion, he started the site in December 2022 to share good news from Pakistan, and has since written and edited more than 200 articles about its people, sports, science, business and world records. He believes the story of Pakistan is bigger than its headlines, and that good news, told honestly, is worth telling every day.