Distinguished Guests,
Members of Media,
Ladies and Gentlemen and dear friends.
First of all, I wish to extend a warm welcome to all of you here for your presence at the Malaysia Night 2014.
Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends,
Tonight’s event is an initiative under The Malaysia Kitchen Programme which was launched in 2006 by the Government of Malaysia with the objective of expanding Malaysian restaurants overseas. In doing so, we hope that we could enable people from different parts of the world, which in this case in Guangdong to experience a diverse offering of delicious Malaysian cuisines.
Promotion events such as these has already been organized in major cities around the world, such as London, New York, Melbourne, Shanghai, just to name a few, and hosting this event here in Guangzhou testifies the importance placed by Malaysia on the food and gourmet sector in this city, which is one of China’s major commercial cities.
Malaysia has been actively undertaking an integrated, holistic and multi-pronged approach to promote Malaysian restaurants, food ingredients and food & beverages products overseas. And tonight’s event is a reflective of that effort.
Distinguished guest, Ladies and Gentlemen,
China, with its huge consumer market, and Guangzhou being China’s major commercial center, obviously offer much opportunity for the introduction and promotion of international cuisine from all over the world including from Malaysia. Tonight’s gathering provides the avenue for us to further highlight the culinary excellence of Malaysians and we are excited to share the pleasures of our exotic cuisine with you tonight.
Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my hope that events such as this, Malaysia-China relations which is celebrating the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations this year would further strengthened our people-to-people friendship through our culture, food and traditions. By the end of tonight, I hope you will have a better information and perspective of Malaysia, so much so that you will want to visit Malaysia as we celebrate Year of Festivals in 2015.
I hope that all of you will enjoy the sumptuous spread of cuisine prepared by our Malaysian chefs here in Guangzhou, not only to savour our delicious food, but also experience our Malaysian hospitality.
Last but not least, as we bid good bye to the year 2014, I would like to wish everyone here a Happy New Year. Please have good evening and I hope you will enjoy the programme we prepared for you tonight.
Thank you.