On November 29^th, the closing ceremony of the 8^th Beijing College Student Drama Festival was held in the Central Academy of Drama. USTB's original multi-act play,  Quenching-Travelling around the Steel City on the Moon  ( Quenching for short), came out on top among the 87 works from 44 colleges, winning the Gold Award for Multi-act Plays and the Award for Best Directing. USTB won the Excellent Organization Award.  

The closing ceremony of the College Student Drama Festival

USTB received the Excellent Organization Award

Quenching won the Gold Award for Multi-act Plays

The large campus multi-act play Quenching is the 6^th original drama of USTB, which is based on a deep exploration of the USTB history, culture, and humanistic feelings. Four major characters have a dialogue across time and space, displaying four perspectives; the drama tells the story of USTB graduates of two generations sticking to their original aspirations, chasing their dreams bravely, and finally becoming excellent contributors in different walks of life. Although they live in different eras, the "spirit of iron and steel" is passed down from generation to generation. In front of different turns in life and with different pursuits for dreams, USTBers, with the will as steel and iron, always stick to the school motto spirit of "Seeking Truth and Promoting Innovation" and the fine tradition of "Rigorous academic atmosphere, advocating practice," the spirits of which always inspire USTBers from generation to generation to struggle for the dream of making the country stronger by the development of steel and iron industry and realizing the dream of national rejuvenation.  

Stage photos of Quenching

The Beijing College Student Drama Festival is hosted by the Beijing Municipal Education Commission and undertaken by the Central Academy of Drama. Since the release of the activity notice, USTB has paid great attention to it, organized a special working group, and organized and implemented planning and creation delicately, sparing no effort to prepare for the competition. In order to display the work perfectly, teachers and students of the creative team had a deep exploration of the history and condition of USTB, extensively collected materials, and analyzed the stories and moving events behind the prototypes of the characters. With the joint efforts of all teachers and students, in their spare time, they overcame the difficulty of short creation and rehearsing time but heavy tasks, finally performed it on the stage after two months' preparation, a play which transcends time and space and contains the humanistic feelings of the USTBers.

Group photo

A line awakens the spirit like steel and iron of USTBers of all generations; a stage provides an opportunity to transcend time and space and echo in the hearts of USTBers. During the live performance, the excellent voice and affection of the actors showed different generations of USTBers' pursuit and inheritance of the USTB spirit; their performance won the applause of the audience.

Group photo of USTB teachers and students

In recent years, USTB has thought highly of student aesthetic education and the construction of a student high-level art troupe, and takes the art troupe as an important point to carry out campus cultural activities and practices of aesthetic education. With the strong support of USTB, the art troupe strives hard and pursues excellence, and has made great progress; it now has 5 sub-troupes, including wind music troupe, folk music troupe, chorus, dance troupe, and modern drama troupe, becoming a student organization with most students, largest scale, and greatest influence and cohesion in USTB. Every year, the art troupe carries out hundreds of various cultural and art-themed activities for many teachers, students, and alumni and has won national, provincial, and ministerial-level awards many times. It enjoys a high reputation among universities in Beijing and nationwide with its high professional quality.

It has been learned that in the Beijing college student music, dance, and drama festivals, all the works submitted by USTB Art Troupe won the gold awards in Beijing Municipality (Best Performance Award), including wind music works  Tripod and Courtesy, and  Amusement Park Suite, folk music work  Spirit of Steel, vocal music works I Love You China,  Dedication and Il est Bel et Bon, dance work  Those Times, and modern drama work  Quenching. Currently, the Student Wind Music Troupe and Student Chorus have been selected for the pickup game for the 7^th National College Student Art Performance. They will show the art education level of USTB and the Beijing Municipality on the national stage.

Draft: SHI Jingwen

Revision: CHENG Mingyuan