This undated aerial photo shows Tianfu New Area in Sichuan province. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Sichuan province’s Tianfu New Area, a national-level pilot development zone in Chengdu, is aspiring to become a new business incubator for Hong Kong’s young people who want to pursue a career in the cultural and creative industries, a local official said on Wednesday.

A new industrial park in the New Area, which aims to host Hong Kong cultural talents and facilitate their entrepreneurship, will be put into service this year, Gao Guoying, a senior official of Tianfu New Area, told a delegation of Hong Kong reporters who are on a five-day visit to Sichuan.

The Tianfu New Area, representing Sichuan’s ambitious goal to build technology-centered and sustainable new development clusters, welcomes young Hong Kong people to settle there and share their insights with local peers through the soon-tobe-completed industrial park, said Gao Guoying, a senior official of the New Area

The 1,578-square-kilometer New Area is larger than Hong Kong’s 1,114 sq km total land area.

Gao said the New Area, representing Sichuan’s ambitious goal to build technology-centered and sustainable new development clusters, welcomes young Hong Kong people to settle there and share their insights with local peers through the soon-tobe-completed industrial park.

Close exchanges between Hong Kong and the New Area will certainly help junior businesspeople spark new business ideas and benefit their work, Gao said.

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The industrial park is being developed under the Hong Kong/Sichuan Co-operation Conference, a high-level platform established in 2018 to enable authorities from both sides to form closer ties.

To better learn about the inland province’s prowess in cultural and creative industries, the Hong Kong journalist delegation also visited local cultural companies on Wednesday afternoon.

Xie Pan, Migu Music’s director of content planning, said his company, founded in 2014, has produced over 1,000 original songs, covering genres from electropop and hip-hop to guofeng — a pop style with traditional Chinese cultural elements.

Xie said he feels very happy to produce music in Sichuan, as the province has a mix of different ethnic groups, languages and cultures, which can inspire musicians to create more diversified songs and lyrics.

Towering snow mountains and vast grasslands on the province’s west side also provide great backdrops for filming music videos, Xie said.

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Singers and lyricists also draw inspiration from local symbolic cultural elements, Xie noted, adding that he once included giant pandas and the Sichuan dialect in a song he was working on.

Yu Jinxiang, a music producer at Migu Music, said Cantopop has inspired local singers, and he is looking forward to there being more cooperation with Hong Kong’s music industry.

An employee of Chengdu Coco Cartoon, an animation production firm that participated in the making of 2019 blockbuster Ne Zha — a cartoon based on a Chinese folk tale — said some characters in the movie are inspired by elements from Sichuan’s renowned Sanxingdui, an ancient Bronze Age civilization that flourished in the Sichuan Basin.

The Hong Kong delegation will continue their trip until Friday.