Thematic cultural week held in SE China county to deepen cross-Strait exchanges

 From June 10 to June 12, Chen Jinggu Cultural Activities Week, a sub-event of the 18th Straits Forum, drew crowds of locals and visitors from near and far to Gutian County in southeast China’s Fujian Province.

For years, such thematic activities have been held consecutively in the county, which is also the cradle of Chen Jinggu culture, to highlight related cultural inheritance and cross-Strait exchanges.

Xu Feng, Party chief of Gutian County, attributed the locality’s adherence to holding the cultural week event to shared aspirations for nurturing the common cultural roots among people across the Taiwan Strait.

From mountainous eastern Fujian to palaces and temples around the world, there are as many as 120 million Chen Jinggu believers and the time-honored inheritance epitomizes the diversity, inclusiveness and resilience of the Chinese civilization, said Xu.

Worshiped as the “goddess for women and children” among her believers, Chen Jinggu was, as legends said, a woman in the Tang Dynasty who devoted her life to medical studies and caring for fellow villagers.

Nowadays, Chen Jinggu culture, whose spiritual core incorporates not only great virtue, but universal love and righteousness as well, stands as one of the key cultural bonds between people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Notably, one sub-event of the Chen Jinggu Cultural Activities Week featuring a return to Linshui Palace, the broadly-recognized ancestral temple of Chen Jinggu, gathered 1,000-plus related representatives on June 11.

They, coming from temples and associations in localities including Fujian, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Guangdong and Zhejiang, and foreign countries such as the U.S., Canada, Malaysia and Singapore, witnessed the launching of a pilot program further enhancing cross-Strait exchanges in Chen Jinggu belief and customs.

Inheriting and renewing such folk beliefs as a cultural bridge, Gutian County will continue to proactively participate in related integrated development and bolster cross-Strait industrial collaboration and youth entrepreneurship to let more Taiwan compatriots stay and live a happy life in Gutian, noted Xu.

Other thematic activities were also organized earlier this week to deepen interactions between Fujian and Taiwan youths, women, merchants and businesses to honor the fine spirit of the Chinese traditional culture and customs.

SOURCE Xinhua Silk Road