China Jilin Puts on Culture Week in Berlin Germany

Jilin province's "2015 China: Jilin Week" came to the final stop on its European tour, on July 7, in the city of Berlin, capital of Germany, bringing a folk music concert, a photo exhibition of Jilin's Changbai Mountain, a local cultural heritage show, a book fair, and dozens of traditional Chinese musical instruments.

On hand for the opening ceremony in the music hall of Universitaet der Künste Berlin were officials from the German Federal Foreign Office's cultural department, counselors from the Chinese Embassy in Germany, the vice-president of the China International Culture Association, and people from the Jilin province cultural department, and young artists from China and Germany who had a friendly exchange and put on an amazing show.

The musicians played against a backdrop of famous Chinese paintings, such as "Riverside Scene in the Qingming Festival", a 25-meter painting from the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), and "Baishan Mountain and Songhua River", a landscape work from Jilin, bringing the wonders of classical China to German audiences. A Berlin student chorus and young artists in Berlin also joined the performance, with cultural interaction that removed all boundaries.

One German woman went backstage to tell the Chinese artists that this was the best Chinese concert she had ever seen and wanted to see more. She said she was especially curious about the erhu, a two-stringed instrument that seemed to convey so many different moods. One student from Universitaet der Künste Berlin who joined the show praised the cultural exchange with young Chinese and said they should have more interaction with China, which is an important partner of Germany.

Chinese representatives addressed at the opening ceremony explaining that "Jilin Week's" purpose was to encourage stronger ties with Germany, with which it has had diplomatic ties for 43 years. The province also has strong connections with Germany in the automobile industry for the past 20 years, and the leading Chinese car company FAW has close ties with Germany's Volkswagen and Audi. Some German celebrations, such as the beer festival and cabbage festival, have become popular in Jilin. And German representatives acknowledged the relationship with Jilin in the auto industry, and pointed to the fact that Jilin has a German school for greater cooperation in education.