Cultivate the Tang Xianzu cultural brand and deepen cultural exchanges at home and abroad

BEIJING, July 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2018 Tang Xianzu International Theater Exchange Month will be staged in Fuzhou City in southeast China's Jiangxi Province from September 28 to late October this year.

The province held a press conference for the event in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on the morning of July 28.

Fuzhou is the hometown of Tang Xianzu, a famous playwright, litterateur and thinker of the Ming Dynasty. After marking the 400th anniversary of Tang's death in 2016, Fuzhou organized the Tang Xianzu theater festival and launched an exchange program lasting for about one month in 2017 as part of efforts to mark the 45th anniversary of the establishment of ambassadorial diplomatic relations between China and Britain.

As part of efforts to further integrate excellent Chinese traditional culture into the Belt and Road Initiative, promote excellent Chinese traditional culture overseas and facilitate cultural exchanges and integration, Jiangxi provincial government this year will continue to organize the Tang Xianzu International Theatre Exchange Month by working with the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries with strong support from the China Theatre Association. The event is expected to highlight the Tang Xianzu cultural brand, boost the development of cultural industry and continuously enhance cultural self-confidence.

By keeping organizing the Tang Xianzu International Theatre Exchange Month, Fuzhou aims to promote excellent traditional culture, tell Chinese stories in a more engaging manner and carry out Chinese and foreign cultural exchanges and cooperation to bring domestic and global attention to Tang Xianzu, Fuzhou, Jiangxi and Chinese culture, thus increasing Chinese culture's presence and influence, according to Xiao Yi, vice chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial People's Political Consultative Conference and secretary of the Fuzhou Municipal CPC Party Committee.

In more than one month since last September 24 last year, over 20 wonderful plays from home and abroad were staged in Fuzhou, featuring performances played by groups from the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Romania, Albania, Egypt, Mauritius, Colombia and other countries.

This year's exchange month aims to organize an innovative, diverse, dynamic and classic event, and the theme of this year's event is to cultivate the Tang Xianzu cultural brand, expand Linchuan culture's influence, deepen cultural exchanges at home and abroad and facilitate cultural tourism industry development. The event will feature international elements and be organized in a market-oriented manner and for mass participation.

This year's theatre exchange activities will deepen people's understanding of Tang Xianzu's thoughts and artistic achievements, promote Jiangxi culture overseas, and further facilitate cultural, friendship and economic exchanges between Jiangxi and the rest of the world, Wu Zhongqiong, deputy governor of Jiangxi Province.

Jiangxi hopes to add some local cultural elements to the world culture while making its own culture more globally appealing, Wu added.

The theatre exchange month will further deepen the "dialogue" between Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare, enhance cultural exchanges and cooperation between China and foreign countries, promote cultural trade development, support Jiangxi culture's overseas dissemination and bring global attention to the province's economic and social development, according to Chi Hong, head of Jiangxi's culture department.

The 2018 Tang Xianzu International Theatre Exchange Month will feature Chinese and foreign classic performances, parade activities, tea-picking opera shows, culture-experiencing trips for foreign cultural officials in China, and the performances of award-winning opera pieces, exhibition of the Jiangxi's intangible cultural heritages as well as various mass cultural activities.

In recent years, Fuzhou has actively promoted excellent traditional cultures, created the cultural brand of Tang Xianzu, aiming to become a national historical and cultural city and "China's City of Plays". The city made into the top ten most culturally competitive cities in China in 2017. The city has helped develop two exchange programs which bring people to visit Fuzhou's Linchuan District to research and study local culture and experience oriental and western cultures represented by Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare respectively. The two routes have seen 283 train trips with over 100,000 research and study visits since last year.