Interview: Cultural exchange between China, Britain has brighter future

There has been a long tradition that Chinese people and British people are interested in each other's culture. The two countries have more possibilities and opportunities nowadays to make their cultural exchange a great flourish, Professor Alan Macfarlane at the University of Cambridge, said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Macfarlane, chairman of the Cambridge Rivers Project and life fellow of King's College, Cambridge, has held a series of events for some well-known Chinese students who studied at the university in the past years.

Among those famous Chinese students, Xu Zhimo, a very popular late poet in China, was commemorated by a photographic exhibition and an international poetry festival.

Xu had some friends in the King's College, such as Roger Fry, Lowes Dickinson, and they learnt from each other at that time. Followed by Xu, Yeh Chun Chan and Xiao Qian, both were great translator and writer, also bridged the cultural exchange between China and Britain from 1920s, according to Macfarlane.

Professor Macfarlane first visited China in 1996 as a tourist. After 2002, he went to China every year, as anthropologist and historian, traveled over most of China, from remote villages to megacities, with camera and his students.

"China was just beginning to develop rapidly at that time. But the roads were still quite rough, the hospitals were still very simple, and the airport was just being extended by people who didn't have any machinery. They were just using wheel barrows to make new airports," he recalled.

He witnessed huge changes of China, not only in the big cities and the countryside, but also the development in education and law courts occurred in the last 20 years.

"Behind the huge changes, the people stay the same. The character of people and their attitudes towards their families, stays much the same. And that deep structure hasn't changed from the Han Dynasty," he affirmed.

In the eyes of the anthropologist and historian, China is a very easy place to understand, based on its inner structure of the Confucianism.

However, there are still very many misunderstandings, stereotypes and bad publicity to China, which Macfarlane believed are from some arrogant westerners, who don't know Chinese history, culture and problems it faced.

Looking at the whole history of China, it is one of the less or least aggressive civilizations on the planet, which would not become a worry for him, said the professor.

"China is, in some way, the easiest civilization on earth to understand once you have the keen to it," he believed.

As the second half of the Year of China-UK Cultural Exchange started in Britain in July, a variety of events have been held across the country.

An exhibition, Yeh Chun Chan and World War II: A Chinese Member of the Bloomsbury Group, the Xu Zhimo Poetry Festival and the launching of the first international digital Kunqu Opera museum have taken place on the campus.

"Exchanges take the understanding of west to China, the more we can mutually understand at a deep level, the more chance there is we can avoid confrontation and misunderstanding," he said, adding cultural exchange between China and Britain, at this moment, is not enough, but just started.

Therefore, Macfarlane is writing books to introduce multiaspect of China. He also visited universities across China, and donated thousands of books, researches and documentaries.

"Culture is not too threatening. As human beings, we all have the appreciation of beauty and of music and poetry. We share these things, the Chinese have great love of western music and drama, and we should educate ourselves to understand the Chinese tradition," he explained.

Chinese people and food were the most interesting things he thought in terms of Chinese culture, he said.

Although communication between the two ends of Eurasian never broke off through history, nowadays, all sorts of technical changes, such as the Internet, video, make communication quicker and collaboration easier.

"The possibilities and opportunities are there, and the wealth is there, and interest is there, and all of that makes me think that there will be a great flourish in the next 10, 20, 30 years," Macfarlane said confidently.

"There will be more trust in the economic and political relations between the countries if China and Britain could further promote their cultural exchange. If we set a good example of mutual cooperation and collaboration, then other countries would follow. It could have a very good, further impact," he said. Endit