On August 20, 2018, the founder of Window of Philadelphia, Sino-American Business & Travel Association, held the "Across Golden Bridge" Sino-US Cultural Heritage and Urban Development Forum at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in eastern United States, which was co-sponsored by the Chinese Consulate General in New York, the Philadelphia City Government and the China Culture Media Group, and hosted by the China Culture Media Group's Foreign Culture Communication Center and the Sino-American Business & Travel Association. Zhao Yumin, representing the Consulate General of the Chinese Consulate General in New York, James Kenney, Mayor of Philadelphia, Song Heyi, Member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, editor-in-chief of China Culture Media Group and editor-in-chief of China Culture Newspaper, attended the opening ceremony of the forum and delivered speeches. Li Liyan, Cultural Counsellor of the Chinese Consulate General in New York, Juvencio Gonzalez, Special Assistant to the Vice Governor of Pennsylvania, Mark Squilla, Congressman of Philadelphia, Tianjin Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Film and Television, Zhang Xiaolan, Assistant to Foreign Affairs, Chairman of China Culture and Media Group, and Mr. Zhang Wenlong, President of the Sino-American Business & Travel Association attended the forum. Nearly 200 experts and guests from all walks of life in the field of cultural heritage in China and the United States attended the forum alongside them.
https://www.mfa.gov.cn/ce/cgny//chn/lgxw/t1587763.htm 总领馆官网网
http://world.people.com.cn/n1/2018/0821/c1002-30241849.html 人民
https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cul/2018/08-21/8605748.shtml 中国新闻网
http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2018-08/21/content_5315386.htm 中央人民政府网
https://www.sohu.com/a/252616711_157267 搜狐网
“Across Golden Bridge" is a high-end ideological dialogue brand in China's foreign cultural exchanges. It is a brand cultural event of China Culture and Media Group (CCMG), a subsidiary of the Ministry of Culture. CCMG China Culture External Communication Center is responsible for the specific operation. The biggest feature of this series of forums is the high attendance, the great influence of the activities, and the extensive media dissemination. The event integrates the efforts of the government, experts, the media, and enterprises. It focuses on cultural topics of common interest, and builds an effective platform to enhance bilateral understanding and mutual trust, strengthen friendly cooperation, and achieve mutual benefit. “Across Golden Bridge” has become a unique landscape for promoting cultural exchanges between China and the United States.
Jim Kenney, chairman of the U.S. side of the forum and Mayor of Philadelphia, said that Philadelphia is the only American city among the 250 members of the World Heritage Cities Alliance, and it is a sister city to Tianjin. Chinese is the third largest language in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia's Chinatown is the center of the Chinese community in the Eastern United States. This forum is a perfect opportunity to further develop these friendly relations.
The speech of Zhao Yumin, Acting Consul General of the Chinese Consulate General in New York, can be described as a high-profile speech. He said that today we are gathered here to discuss heritage and urban development. In fact, the “heritage” that needs to be protected most is the spirit of cooperation between China and the United States. Exchanges are not limited to business and economics, but also humanities. More exchanges and cooperation between China and the United States will eventually form a positive force to promote the forward development of relations between the two countries.
Authoritative experts from the cultural heritage community and urban “designers” from China and the United States held a high-end ideological discussion on cultural heritage protection and urban development. Including Guo Zhan, Vice President of the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics and President of the World Heritage Research Association, Zhang Zhiping, an ancient architecture expert of the State Administration of Cultural Relics and chief engineer of the Potala Palace Maintenance Project in Tibet - Zhang Guanghan, deputy chief planner of the China Institute of Urban Planning and Design, Cao Zhijun, Director of the Nanjing Museum, He Yan, director of the Beijing Tsinghua Institute of Heritage Digitization and Beijing Qingcheng Ruixian Institute of Digital Science and Technology, Holly Rushmeier, professor of Computer Science at Yale University, Donovan Rypkema, President of International Heritage Strategy Corporation, Alan Greenberg, Professor at Drexel University, and Larry Dubinski, Director of the Franklin Science Museum in Philadelphia.
The event is reported on the official website of the Chinese Consulate General in New York and mainstream official media in China and the United States such as Xinhua News Agency, CCTV, People's Daily, NBC, BBC, etc.
Click on the link to view the original text and detailed forum content:
Attachment: [Summary of the Expert Forum]
Historical attributes make cities unique. “Who are we? Where do we come from? And where do we go? In the process of human development, there are rich and varied historical cultures and traditions, which are conducive to mutual understanding among diverse civilizations." This was the opening remarks of Guo Zhan, a world heritage expert, Vice President of the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics, and President of the World Heritage Research Association. With this speech, he brought the participants into a distant and vast time and space.
Historical and cultural cities have historical witness value, scientific research value and aesthetic value. He contrasts Beijing and Quanzhou with the theme of cultural heritage diversity and transformation in culture, tradition and temporal and spatial contexts.
Unlike European commercial and political expansion after being concentrated in a central historical area, Beijing has undergone three generations of planning and construction during the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. A series of buildings such as Yongdingmen, Zhengyang Gate, Forbidden City, Jingshan, Bell and Drum Tower form a 7.8-kilometer central axis, which is the backbone of the city. The symmetrical layout of the east and west buildings, which are simple and harmonious, implicitly conform to traditional morals and customs, giving the city a breathing margin, showing the boldness of a historical metropolis and the peculiar temperament of the East. As an important node of the Maritime Silk Road, Quanzhou has been a port city for Chinese-foreign exchanges from the 10th to the 14th centuries. There are not only Luoyang Bridge, Confucius Temple, and Laojun Rock in the Song Dynasty, but also Islamic cemeteries and Catholic stone carvings. There are Chinese decorations in mosques and Indian decorations in Buddhist temples, which are typical of the complementary blend of material and immaterial cultures from different cultural roots. Guo Zhan pointed out that as a young country, the United States contains its genes and evolution through the planning and construction of its cities, and many port cities have contributed to modern development.
Ms. Zhang Zhiping, an authoritative expert in the analysis of world heritage protection projects, a member of the Ancient Construction Expert Group of the State Administration of Cultural Relics, and the Chief Engineer of the Potala Palace Maintenance Project in Tibet, vividly recounted the history of the construction of Jokhang Temple and the ancient City of Lhasa using mountain goats to carry soil 1,300 years ago. Songtsen Gampo married the princess of the Tang Dynasty and Nepal to build the Potala Palace for the princess. The second phase of the protection project launched from 1998 to 2001 divided the entire building into units for surveying, mapping and analysis, and used traditional materials and techniques to strengthen and eliminate risks. There is a serious rat infestation here, and there was a misunderstanding among monks because rats stole merit money. Because Buddhism does not kill, it can only be solved by raising cats.
Protecting historical and cultural districts brings real benefits
Song Heyi, the Chinese chairman of the Chinese Side forum and the editor-in-chief of China Culture Media Group, said in his speech that, in the process of modernization, the Chinese government and people are increasingly aware of the importance of cultural heritage to the people's better lives. People are now paying more attention to the protection and utilization of cultural heritage. The meaning of Philadelphia is “the city of brotherhood and friendship”. Respecting cultural heritage in development is the embodiment of the city's friendship, which will make the city more humanistic, emotional, warm, and more friendly.
“Beijing and Washington belong to the same central axis model. The difference is that Washington consists of roads and greenery to form the real axis, while Beijing consists of a series of buildings and spaces to form the virtual axis. "Zhang Guanghan, an expert in estate planning and deputy chief planner of the China Institute of Urban Planning and Design, introduced the hierarchical system of Chinese cultural heritage protection (famous historical and cultural cities, villages, and sites) and the guiding ideology of Beijing's famous city protection plans (from cultural relics and monuments to historical and cultural districts to the entire city of Beijing), and proposed to deal with the relationship between people's livelihood, urban development and protection.
In the eyes of Donovan Rypkema, president of the International Heritage Strategy Company, protection will bring development. In recent years, the renovation of historic buildings in the United States and the recovery of central streets have attracted attention. The data he cited show that the protection of historic areas has produced more job opportunities, a faster increase in property values, and property rights are held longer. The protected areas are more walkable and livable, and old buildings consume less energy than new buildings. Therefore, more talents have been gathered in those areas, which has greatly improved economic data and international competitiveness.
Digital technology serves cultural protection
In the PPT, the stone engraved with the Pythagorean triangle is covered with traces of time. Under the processing of the software, the traces of friction and weathering are reduced, and the symbols and handwriting become clear. This magic technique attracts the attention of the audience. Professor Holly Rushmeier from the Department of Computer Science at Yale University introduced the world's most cutting-edge visual media imaging technology, CHER-Ob. She said that the physical traits express the past of the objects, and digital technology can collect, display, and analyze information. Commercial computing is currently very expensive, so heritage preservation groups seek to clarify free and open source software. Their CHER-Ob can be easily switched between data collected by different devices, greatly reducing the workload.
The application of Chinese digital technology in cultural protection focuses on connecting the past with the present, and things with people. He Yan, an expert in digital heritage and president of the Beijing Qingcheng Ruixin Digital Technology Research Institute, introduced the virtual reconstruction based on records and preservation. The murals of Mogao Grottoes are very fragile and cannot receive too many visitors, so the Digital Dunhuang was made, and the digital Forbidden City enables non-open and maintained areas to be viewed and experienced. For cultural heritage that no longer exists, such as the Old Summer Palace, information is collected through sites, archaeology, documents, old photos, etc., and a model is established to make a visual three-dimensional map. China has purchased the most expensive instruments for the protection of cultural relics. Through three-dimensional laser scanning and atmospheric digital monitoring, the correlation between weathering and weather was found in the Yungang Grottoes, and targeted maintenance plans were formulated. Another example is to break down the information of the mural in the mezzanine of Shuanglin Temple and find that it has been covered 4 times.
Another pair of interesting speakers were Larry Dubinski, President and CEO of the Franklin Institute, and Cao Zhijun, director of the Nanjing Museum. Cao Zhijun began from the similarities between Nanjing and Philadelphia-both are capitals and enthusiasts of brotherhood and friendship-to discuss “museums and the memory of a city.” He believes that a famous city is composed of many cultural heritage sites, and many heritage sites are collected in museums. Nanjing is the city of museums. Currently, there are over 90 museums of various types, and 100 more will be built next year to combine museums with cultural heritage such as Yunjin, showcasing the historical charm of the city.
Larry Dubinski also focused on the museum's contribution to urban development and cultural heritage protection. The Franklin Institute was established 200 years ago and has focused on science education since 1970. The museum has a variety of theme exhibitions such as aerospace, human anatomy, and trains, emphasizing hands-on learning and touchability. Considering that many Americans do not have the opportunity to visit China, not long ago they cooperated with Shaanxi to hold an exhibition of the Terracotta warriors and Terracotta horses. To retell the well known story, they asked their children to play as archaeologists, experience the amazement of the terracotta warriors and horses when they were first unearthed, and emphasize the importance of science and discovery. Franklin Institute received more than 200,000 visitors, making it the most sensational exhibition they held. They keep pace with the times and are ready to choose solar energy, nuclear energy, environmental protection, food, agriculture and other fields to curate.
