Chinese pianist Lang Lang (left) is the image ambassador for the year of events. [Photo/China Daily]

He started to learn Spanish at Beijing Foreign Studies University in 1978 and worked at a Culture Ministry unit for Latin American exchange programs a few years later.

He especially likes the carnivals,he says, when people gather in the streets in flamboyant costumes to sing, dance and make merry.

In 2006, the CAEG brought more than 200 Mexican artists to Beijing for the Meet in Beijing Arts Festival, a 15-year-old international festival hosted by the Culture Ministry.

The following year, Zhang Yu took six Chinese art troupes and two exhibitions for tours of Mexico.

In 2012, the CAEG invited the Cuban National Ballet to perform Swan Lake in Beijing, Shanghai and the southern city of Guangzhou. The same year, Tango Desire, a dance performance from Argentina, toured China. This year, the same show will return to the country.

The Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero's ongoing debut exhibition in the country at Beijing's National Museum of China and the China Art Museum in Shanghai is seen serving as a "warm up" gig ahead of the series of events to mark the year of cultural exchanges between China and the American countries this year.

"There is a variety of performing arts from China and Latin America that are unknown to audiences in both countries because we haven't offered them yet. But that's what we are doing now," Zhang Yu says.

The closing ceremony for the year's cultural programs will be held at the National Grand Theater in Peru in November.