‘Better China’ exhibit documents country’s beauty with 100 stories
▶ Visitors can search deeper into social, cultural growth
The Song of the Earth: Artistic Documentary for a Better China exhibition hosted by the China Academy of Art kicked off on Wednesday at the China Millennium Monument’s Beijing World Art Museum.
Taking “experiencing China’s geography” as its gist, the exhibition documents a total of 100 cases from around China to interpret the concept of a “better China.”
Some of those cases focus on China’s rural revitalization and heritage conservation, while others take “Chinese people” at the center to show how the country has dedicated itself to efforts such as providing the elderly with caring communities and children with up-todate aesthetic education.
The highlights to the current exhibition include cases such as Village Super League (known as Cunchao in China) soccer games and the Dingzha water town, which was a granary community in the 1960s located on the border areas of Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang that was recently revitalized as a cultural tourism hot spot.
What compliments those 100 cases are other exhibits such as examples of government proposals, an interactive workshop and a book exhibition.
Gao Shiming, the show’s planner and also president of the China Academy of Art, told the Global Times that visitors can view the 100 stories as a “category” for searching deeper into China’s diverse social and cultural growth.
“We see the powers of art, technology, nature and culture converge as one strong force helping us to better our social and cultural constructions,” Gao said.
The 100 stories were selected from a total of 2,000 cases, Wang Sha, the show’s curator, told the Global Times.
The show was also held in 2023 with 100 other stories, but the curator noted that the themes of “environmental protection and sustainable development” are the focus of the current exhibition.
Through such environmental cases, Gao told the Global Times that the ecological resources in China are gradually transforming into a “new industrial orientation.”
Such resources can not only nurture China’s cultural tourism industry, but also cultivate new quality productive forces supporting the country’s social construction.
The expert said that he believes China’s unique ecological philosophy and its own approaches to modernity can inspire overseas countries.
The exhibition was inspired by the “Better China” initiative that was founded by the Research Institute of Better China Initiative of the CAA.
The initiative is dedicated to collecting different social and cultural studies over the years and analyzing them for finding new development routes for fields such as cultural education, cultural tourism, art and technological growth.