On the evening of April 25, a cross-cultural exchange lecture with the theme of “Dialogue and Exchange - Overseas Dissemination of Chinese Culture” was held in HZAU. Three lecturers were invited to share their insights: Associate Professor Wang Fei of the College of Foreign Languages, HZAU, participated offline, Yao Hui and and Ian McNally of the Ohio State University participated online.
Prof. Wang discusses overseas Chinese culture with Ian McNally. (Photo / Zhang Jianhua)
At the beginning, Prof. Wang analyzed the current situation of Chinese cultural dissemination from the aspect of cultural ecology theory. As a “cultural insider” who grew up in the Chinese cultural environment, she reckoned that China’s low cultural output capability is not commensurate with its profound historical and cultural heritage. Taking Li Ziqi (a famous Chinese culture YouTuber), Grandpa Amu (a senior Chinese carpentry went viral on YouTube), Michael Wood (an English director filmed documentaries about China), CGTN(an official Chinese publicity media) and other subjects as examples, Prof. Wang discussed critical problems in Chinese culture dissemination progressively: who will disseminate, what to disseminate and how to disseminate.
As an overseas Chinese, Yao Hui shared her feelings and opinions on the overseas dissemination of Chinese culture. Combined with her experience of teaching Chinese culture courses in the US, she introduced the current situation of Chinese culture dissemination on American campuses. Yao Hui suggested that to promote overseas dissemination of Chinese culture, we should pay attention to both traditional culture and modern culture. The dissemination work should not only focus on cultural commonality, but also highlight the diversity of Chinese culture from the perspective of “cultural outsider”. Only by strengthening cultural self-confidence, maintaining mutual respect and tolerance, and constantly promoting cultural exchanges and cooperation with foreign countries, can we better disseminate Chinese culture.
Ian McNally illustrated his views on the overseas dissemination of Chinese culture from the angle of a “cultural outsider”. Ian said that his love of Chinese martial arts since childhood made him gradually attracted to Chinese culture. He believes that to understand a culture, interest is often the best “stepping stone”. Since Chinese culture is profound, taking objects that can represent the specific images of Chinese culture as carrier can help foreigners better understand Chinese culture.
Also, students who participated in the lecture shared their experience of cross-cultural communication and discussed topics such as the ways of Chinese culture dissemination, the relationship between cultural dissemination and language learning with lecturers.
Source: http://news.hzau.edu.cn/2022/0429/63127.shtml
Translated by: Du Xinjie, Fan Rusi, Lei Mengfan
Supervised by: Zhang Juan
