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November 12, 2019

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CIIE provides a platform for cultural exchanges

A total of 181 countries, regions and international organizations attended the second China International Import Expo (November 5-10), and more than 3,800 enterprises participated in the exhibitions, according to media reports.

As the display of so many products is a veritable cultural crystallization from people all over the world, the event is nothing short of a confluence of different cultures in the Chinese landscape.

The CIIE is another milestone in terms of facilitating “bringing in” through “going out.” At present, cultural “going out” is often understood to be a uni-directional event.

As a matter of fact, wherever communication occurs, there is bound to be target audience and responses, suggesting that all kinds of communication occur in two or more directions, and mutual learning always results in mutual benefits. It is easy to see that cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries are typically interactive, taking place in multiple directions. This has been proved from a historical point of view.

When Zhang Qian (164-114 BC), a Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24) explorer and the Silk Road opener, traveled from the Chinese heartland to West Asia and then back, he not only made Chinese culture felt westward, over mountains and across rivers, but also took home grapes, alfalfa, pomegranates and flax.

Most significantly, he had left us an invaluable spiritual legacy, born of his observations and reflections along the Silk Road, which gave rise to an open view on the part of the Chinese civilization and resulted in an appreciative interaction between Chinese and outside civilizations.

Peace and harmony

Subsequent pilgrimage by Xuanzang, a 7th-century Buddhist monk, and his voluminous Chinese translation of sutras and their propagation, were a natural extension of this spirit.

More recent representative was Zheng He (1371-1433), a well-famed navigator who, heading his titanic expeditionary fleet, traveled southward and westward across the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean seven times, helping disseminate Chinese technology, arts and civilization in dozens of countries in Asia and Africa, sowing the seeds of such essentially Chinese concepts as benevolence and righteousness, temperateness and kindness, and the overriding worth of harmony.

Meanwhile, he was also instrumental in bringing home advanced technology and culture from where he visited, making the Maritime Silk Road a path to peace.

Thus the ancient Silk Road had all along been a two-way communication, leading to innovation, cultural inspiration and harvests. Today what enabled the ancient Silk Road to be a meeting place of different civilizations would continue to make the import expo a fertile soil for exchange of cultures, in the context of the new era. But there is a difference to this. The going out of Chinese culture in the new era is informed by the volition to build a path of cooperation across different sectors. Given the differences in economic circumstances of so many countries, China naturally should put more emphasis on support in economic and cultural terms.

And for any culture to take roots and grow in an alien soil, it needs to first of all have the soil and space necessary for development, and should leverage the political, social and living resources of the indigenous country. In return, the flowering of the culture in foreign soil would come to nourish the culture back home.

Chinese culture is in essence a culture informed by harmony with nature, the love of society and others. The import expo provides a good platform for cultivating this spirit.

The author is a professor at Tongji University and Center for Sino-German People-to-People Dialogue at the university.




 

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