Culture City of East Asia 2019 Kicks Off in Xi'an

Zhang Xu, cultural and tourism vice-minister, speaks at the opening ceremony. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

The Culture City of East Asia 2019 opened in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi province, March 27.

Zhang Xu, China’s cultural and tourism vice-minister, Hu Minglang, vice-governor of Shaanxi province, Li Mingyuan, vice-secretary of Xi'an Municipal Committee of CPC and mayor of Xi'an,attended the event. Representatives from selected cities of China, Japan and South Korea, and other guests from home and abroad in the field of culture and tourism were present at the opening ceremony.

Zhang said the Culture City of East Asia serves as the major fruit of the strengthened cooperation in the cultural field thanks to the establishment of mechanism of the trilateral meetings of leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea. It has built a broad platform for city development and the strengthening of international exchanges.

Zhang hoped that Xi'an would seize the historic opportunity of being designated as the Culture City of East Asia, promote its development with the integration of culture and tourism, enhance the level of cultural exchanges with foreign countries, further deepen the understanding and friendship between East Asia and the rest of the world, and play an active role in building a community of shared future.

Representatives from the Culture Cities of East Asia 2019 in China (Xi’an), South Korea (Incheon) and Japan (Toshima-ku), delivered speeches, respectively.

According to them, culture is not only a bridge for communication, but also a bond of cooperation. The three cities hope to take advantage of the opportunity of being selected as the Culture City of East Asia to strengthen exchanges and cooperation and make new contributions to promoting cultural exchanges among East Asian countries and regions.

At the opening ceremony, the guests watched promotion videos of the three cities and the joint performances of artists from the three countries.

The year-round activities of Culture City of East Asia 2019 in Xi'an will cover various areas such as public cultural construction, intangible cultural heritage protection, public cultural undertakings, cultural industries, international cultural exchanges, as well as exchanges among the youth, through more than 60 key activities on the Belt and Road, literature and art, tourism, music, books, science and technology, film and animation.

The Culture City of East Asia program was first proposed by the cultural ministers of the three countries during the third ministerial conference in Nara, Japan, in January 2011.

It aims to promote cultural diversity in East Asia, and to allow the three countries to foster mutual understanding and a sense of unity in the region.

China's other East Asian Cultural Cities in recent years include Ningbo from Zhejiang province in 2016, Changsha from Hunan province in 2017, and Harbin from Heilongjiang province in 2018.