Striking a new chord in culture with neighbors

The symposium held by the Chinese National Academy of Arts in the Guangxi port of Beihai gathered experts, scholars and artists from 11 countries, including China, Russia, Mongolia, the United States and South Korea, to study the role of culture in the construction of "a community of shared future for mankind".

Xin Hongmei, vice-mayor of Beihai, says the city that once served as a port of departure for the ancient Maritime Silk Road is now a window for China to further open up to Southeast Asia.

Xin says: "We hope the symposium will encourage academic cooperation and cultural exchanges among countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative and raise its theoretical achievements to a new level."

Han Ziyong, director of the academy, emphasizes the importance of engaging border areas at international cultural exchanges.

"People from areas like the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Yunnan province, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Heilongjiang province have more common languages with people in these neighboring countries," says Han. "It's necessary to carry out in-depth, long-term and stable cooperation with other countries by holding activities like this symposium and also by sending art troupes abroad to learn from their foreign counterparts."

Wang Dandan, a professor at Quanzhou Normal University, agrees, citing the development of nanyin, an ancient music style from East China's Fujian province, which was initially only promoted by a handful of enthusiasts. Now with the numerous nanyin associations setting up a variety of competitions and shows, the genre has been spreading to other countries.

Zhao Minglong, a researcher with the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, points out that frequent people-to-people communication will encourage the government to organize more large-scale cultural-exchange activities.

"For instance, some ethnic groups living in Guangxi and Vietnam often visit each other and celebrate their traditional festivals together, which has come to the government's attention," says Zhao. "Last year, our local government started to run a festival gala for residents on both sides of the border."

With his research of the many nationalities living along an ancient Silk Road route running from China's Sichuan province to the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia underway, he is finding that there are many crossborder communities within which people from different countries share languages and customs.

"The protection of these shared intangible heritages should be based on goodwill and mutual understanding," says Zhao. "We should uncover their common values by absorbing the essence of this and discarding the dregs, and then pass down these cultures to future generations together."