Forbidden City Cultural Dialogue Highlights Harmony, Peace, and Diversity
Dialogue on Exchanges and Mutual Learning among Civilizations: 2019 Talks was held in the Forbidden City.
THE Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, was the setting last November 28 of the inaugural Dialogue on Exchanges and Mutual Learning among Civilizations: 2019 Talks in the Forbidden City. Organized by the Chinese Association for International Understanding (CAFIU), the event was attended by political heavyweights, scholars, artists, and cultural celebrities from across the globe.
Choosing the Palace Museum as the venue for this dialogue among civilizations was a landmark move. “The Forbidden City is emblematic of Chinese culture and civilization, which is why the event also included a tour of the Palace Museum to impress on our guests the importance China attaches to protecting its cultural heritage while developing its economy,” said Wang Yajun, vice minister of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and vice president of the CAFIU.
“The museum showcases traditional Chinese architecture through classical works of art that convey just how far Chinese culture extends beyond philosophical schools of thought and historical works through its depictions of the way of life of this ancient nation. Images of Chinese people’s traditional abodes reflect their innate belief in the unity of nature and humankind — all integral facets of the Dialogue. I believe this type of conference lays far more store by the effect of the venue and its ambience on the outlook of those taking part in than on language or speeches presented,” CAFIU Vice President and Dean of Beijing Institute of Culture Innovation and Communication Yu Dan said in an interview.
Song Tao, minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, said at the opening ceremony, “A country’s system encapsulates its cultural essence. The theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics crystallizes traditional Chinese culture and constitutes a new contribution to human civilization whereby China willingly shares its wisdom and governance experience with the rest of the world.”
President of the CAFIU Ji Bingxuan observed in his speech that exchanges with other civilizations and mutual learning have been main features of the development of China’s civilization.
Mutual Learning Begets Cultural Splendor
Dunhuang in northwest China was a major stop along the ancient Silk Road which exemplified the cultural fusion and coexistence of diverse civilizations and the open, inclusive spirit of mutual learning that it nurtured. As deputy director of the Dunhuang Academy of China, Zhang Xiantang remarked, Dunhuang’s grotto art and excavated cultural relics bear witness to its role as a hub of mutual learning among civilizations. He cited the discernible Indian cultural influence as depicted in the Mogao Grottoes — which he deemed a multicultural treasure trove — by virtue of their murals, statues, and Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures, and inclusion of Persian, ancient Greek, and Central Asian cultural elements, evident in clothing and utensils, deities such as Apollo and Artemis, and musical instruments.
In Yu Dan’s view, peoples of different civilizations should embrace the mutual learning methodology. “This means not dwelling solely on our native cultural splendor, but tracing its connections and common ground with other civilizations. Our quest to advance the building of a community with a shared future for mankind
entails pinpointing cultural similarities and parallels with different countries. We respect difference, so will not allow them to hamper exchanges, just as we emphasize common ground, but at the same time value diversity,” said Yu.
Yu gave examples of similarities and differences between the ancient sages, such as Confucius and Socrates, between the architectural masterpieces, such as the Palace Museum and the Louvre Museum, and between literary giants, such as Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu, of various civilizations, as well as the mindbody exercises of tai chi and yoga, all of which nonetheless enacted similar roles. Yu is head of a research team tasked with building a case library for cross-civilization cultural communications and tracing common grounds and differences of civilizations.
“For example, it’s getting colder now, so Chinese folk will soon start preparations for the Spring Festival. As we know, Christmas, the world’s most widely celebrated religious holiday, precedes the Chinese lunar New Year. I often make the jocular observation that Western festivals are endowed by Heaven, as people in the West give thanks to God on those special days, while Chinese ones, when the Chinese people worship their ancestors and give account of their conduct over the past year, are born of the earth. So churches are places for worship in the West, while in China obeisance is made in the ancestral hall. Neither is superior, yet they are different,” Yu elaborated.
For Chinese artist Shu Yong, building bridges is at the core of exchanges among civilizations, which will help build a community with a shared future for mankind. He noted that in recent years, the word “bridge” has been featured most frequently in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speeches on diplomatic occasions to convey Chinese values and the country’s sense of mission. Shu is the creator of the large-scale art installation Golden Bridge on Silk Road, constructed with approximately 20,000 artificial amber bricks embedded with the floral emblems of countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The art work embodies the artist’s yearning to bridge the communication gap across different cultures. It is now a landmark cultural landscape for the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.
“So with the Golden Bridge, we hope to reach out to other countries for more and better communication and exchanges. I hope I’ll have the chance to build Golden Bridges in all regions and countries along the BRI routes. For example, in China, I took the ancient Zhaozhou Bridge as the model. When in other countries, I can be guided by their iconic bridges. I think cultural exchanges and mutual learning merit an overarching concept and symbol,” Shu said.
Essence of Chinese Culture
British economic commentator and senior fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China John Ross believes that certain Western countries represented by the United States have a mistaken concept of China. This, he believes, is evident in assertions about China’s perceived aggressiveness and worries about China’s alleged quest for hegemony. Ross ascribes this misconception to a scanty knowledge of Chinese culture.
“The most widely circulated words in China are, ‘The Chinese people have stood up,’ as uttered by Chairman Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949. In other words, the Chinese people are not going to regard themselves as better than anybody else; those words convey a meaning that the Chinese people are now in the same status
with others and they become just one of them,” Ross told China Today on the sidelines of the Dialogue conference. Ross revealed his huge admiration for President Xi Jinping’s theory of the community with a shared future for mankind. He believes it to be the right path to harmonious coexistence of human society and embodies the essence of Chinese culture.
In Ross’s view, the U.s.-provoked trade war was based on its government’s misunderstanding and misjudgment of China’s culture and development direction. “The efforts and sacrifices the Chinese people have made for its ‘standing up’ go beyond anything that the United States can imagine. The United States lost a few hundred thousand people in WWII, which was terrible, but nothing compared to the historical struggle and historical sacrifice of the Chinese people to get where they are today,” Ross told China Today. This, to him, explains why China so cherishes its peaceful development.
The main focus of Dialogue in the Forbidden City attendees was long-term interaction among civilizations, which Ross regards as vital. He also lays particular emphasis on the urgency of short-term actions to realize mutual understanding. “It’s extremely urgent to correct the short-term big misunderstandings in the United States about how the Chinese people think,” Ross said.
Although an economist, Ross had his initial intellectual contact with China through poetry rather than economy. “It so happens that I love poetry, and while at university many years ago when I was 18 years of age, I read the translations of Chinese Tang Dynasty poetry. It had a huge impact on me. But it was only about 40 years later that I began to understand why,” Ross told China Today. He went on to explain, “It’s because China is the only one of the world’s great civilizations that is not founded on a religion. China is formed from a social philosophy. This is what makes Chinese society somewhat unique. I’m an atheist, and later realized that this is what made such a great impact upon me. It was a different way of looking at the world.”
Taking the Great Wall as an example, Executive Vice President of the China Great Wall Society Dong Yaohui highlighted at the Dialogue the aspect of Chinese culture that treasures harmony and coexistence. “Foreign friends who have been to the Great Wall often ask, ‘Why did the Chinese people make such strenuous efforts to build the Great Wall?’ I tell them it was because of the Chinese longing for peace. People hoped that this massive, solid Great Wall would secure peace by avoiding wars,” Dong said.
He further explained, “Using the Chinese character ‘中’ to illustrate my point, the vertical stroke that bisects the character can be seen as the Great Wall, whereby the left side is outside the Great Wall, and the right part is the area within it. This creates three connotations: First, the outside and inside of the Great Wall are two independent parts; second, they depend on each other and are closely linked; and third, they actually consist of a whole. Erecting along the intersecting farming society and pasturing region, the Great Wall ensured social order by avoiding war.” According to Dong, the majority of sections along the Great Wall have never experienced a war. “The existence of the Great Wall gradually curtailed wars. So the value of the Great Wall lies in its role of securing peace,” Dong concluded.
Learning from Each Other
Melanie Koenderman, associate dean of Tsinghua University’s Schwarzman Scholars, is a big fan of Great Wall hikes. Koenderman said at the Dialogue that the Schwarzman Scholars MA program is aimed at drawing students from around the world who are potential leaders in their field to gain a deep and thorough understanding of China, its history, culture, and development, as well as the amazing innovations that are going on in the country.
“We encourage our students to have conversations, not to win. You’re not entering them as an argument to convince other people of your point of view, but to listen and understand how other people think, or what their perspectives on a topic are. That’s very important.
More important still is getting to understand why they think or feel that way,” Koenderman said. She went on to say that this kind of deep mutual learning is exactly what the Schwarzman program is trying to foster.
Dominic Feroze, a British scholar on the Schwarzman Scholars program, spoke about how China is rising culturally and what such a rise means to the country and the world. “The way it is often framed is from a Western perspective that predicts a potential clash, which is the point I want to take up here. I believe that the idea of emotional clashes predicated on the idea that our cultures are incompatible is absolutely not the case. If we have a universal set of values, that means there’s just one culture, and hence one right way of doing things, which some people think is that based around a Western ocean. But I think we should have a hybrid system; a coexistence of civilizations,” said Feroze. He pointed out that the key lies in how to facilitate such coexistence amid this mutual understanding among civilizations.
When talking about China’s rise, Feroze believes that the international community has been overly obsessed with figures, like GDP and the number of people lifted out of poverty, while ignoring China’s cultural emergence. “When I think about Chinese culture, the Confucian notion of harmonious society comes to mind for this possible coexistence,” he said.
Feroze believes that people-to-people exchanges are a great medium for cultural communication. “I’m incredibly lucky to be in the Schwarzman Scholars program. What’s amazing for me is that I’ve learned so much about Chinese culture and Chinese civilization. And I’ve been able to see and understand new perspectives that I couldn’t even have conceptualized before.” He also suggested that more Chinese students should go to the U.K. as this will undoubtedly promote mutual understanding.
“I think the world has grown used to a China that wasn’t necessarily strong, either geopolitically or economically. But that isn’t the case any longer. And it’s not a matter of whether China becomes the world’s largest economy but when it will become the most culturally powerful country as well,” Feroze observed. He thinks the world should adapt to China’s new role.
Emphasis on Cultural Exchanges
In a sideline interview at the Dialogue, former Prime Minister of Peru Pedro Cateriano spoke of the many connections between the Chinese and Peruvian cultures that have made Chinese people feel somehow at home in Peru. “Chinese immigrants came to Peru long ago, so their culture has fused with Peru’s. And this connection is indestructible. For example, there were students of Chinese origin at the primary school I attended, and Peru’s former minister of transport and communications was a Chinese Peruvian. So all this demonstrates compatibility between the Chinese and Peruvian cultures,” Cateriano told China Today.
Cateriano was delighted to be among those attending the Dialogue in the Forbidden City, saying, “Chinese culture is embodied in every facet of China’s economic and social development. For example, you can spot the Chinese cultural elements in the country’s science and technology. I think China’s great thinkers have played an important role in advancing the development of human civilizations since ancient times.”
Despite all these points of interest, the economic sphere is what aroused the most interest of Cateriano. He mentioned how in recent years China’s investment in Peru has considerably increased, and the important contribution it has made to Peru’s poverty alleviation. He therefore welcomes more Chinese companies to invest in Peru.
In another sideline interview with China Today, Deputy Speaker of Bangladesh Parliament Fazle Rabbi Miah expressed how constructive he believes this kind of dialogue on cultural exchanges to be. “I’m glad to see China take the initiative to arrange this dialogue among civilizations. We support China,” he said. While mentioning the close economic exchanges and frequent people-to-people exchanges between China and Bangladesh, he emphasized that the two sides should deepen their cultural exchanges by each sending delegations. He thinks the two countries’ overseas students also serve as cultural ambassadors. There are now many Bangladeshi students in China, and many Chinese students are studying in Bangladesh. “Cultural exchanges definitely promote mutual understanding,” he said.
Former Vice President of Iran Hassan Ghafouri Fard said in an interview with China Today, “China and Iran are both great countries in Asia with great cultures. The ancient Silk Road once connected us, and now the Belt and Road [Initiative] has once again closely linked our two countries, not just economically, but also culturally.” C