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 the 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. He 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.
Hu Minglang said, taking the construction of Culture City of East Asia as a good opportunity, Xi’an is hoped to pursue high-quality development road characterized by prospering city and benefiting people through culture, speed up the establishment of international city featuring eastern glamour and accelerate the construction of reform and opening-up, thus contributing to the creative transformation and innovative development of Chinese culture.
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.
Themed around “Archaic Xi’an, Culture City of East Asia”, the Culture City of East Asia 2019 is composed of eight main themes including archaic city, Spring Festival, arts, tourism, music, books, craftsmanship and shadows, added with special cultural elements consisting of silk road cultural vein, intangible Spring Festival customs, literature and art, tourism sightseeing, music town, book town, hard & core technology and cultural innovation, and films and comics. Besides, there are more than 60 important activities covering public culture construction, intangible cultural heritage protection, cultural undertakings, cultural industry, foreign cultural exchanges and teenager cultural communications.
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. Since its inauguration in 2013, there are 18 selected cities including Quanzhou, Qingdao, Ningbo, Changsha, Harbin and Xi’an in China, Yokohama, Niigata-ken, Nara-ken, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Toshima-ku in Japan, as well as Gwangju, Cheongju, Jeju, Daegu and Incheon in South Korea.