Cross-culture event in Hainan explores understanding

More than 270 delegates from 55 countries and regions joined 72 speakers from various fields to explore key issues related to China and the world — including cross-cultural connections between East and West — at the Yenching Global Symposium 2023, which opened in Hainan province on April 14. The five-day event was themed "Humanity: Cartographies of Collaboration".

In an opening address, Hong Kai Tan, chair of the symposium, emphasized the importance of interaction, mutual understanding and collaboration in today's world.

"Different cultures have different practices, understandings and interpretations of various concepts. Different communities have different needs, circumstances and values. Respecting these differences, studying them on their own terms, and suspending ethnocentric judgments based upon our own value systems are indispensable to facilitating understanding," he said.

The event also invited experts to speak on cross-cultural connections between Eastern and Western civilizations, as well as on the wisdom that history and philosophy provide for contemporary life.

Fan Shiming, an associate dean of the Yenching Academy, offered his understanding of the symposium's theme during the closing ceremony: "Humanity is the attitude and ability to care for others, to be kind and equal to each other, sympathetic and accommodating enough, tolerant to differences, ready for communication and cooperation," he said.