Peking University, Beijing, Mar. 8th, 2010: Entrusted by Hanban and the Confucius Institute, with the support from Chinese embassies’ in Russia, Germany and Egypt, the PKU Student Cultural Acting Troupe went to Russia, Germany and Egypt to launch cross-cultural communication activities. The troupe made nine performances in five cities across three countries. More than 6000 people were within the audience, including ambassadors and employees in those embassies, Confucius Institute leaders, universities leaders, students, and also overseas Chinese. The acting troupe plays a good role as a cultural envoy by communicating Chinese culture and achieves a complete success. In addition, their performances received warm welcomes by foreign audiences and attracted a large number of foreign media.

By accepting this opportunity in November 2009, the PKU Party Committee paid great attention and immediately organized a working group led by Vice-secretary of the Party Committee. The teachers and students in the acting troupe overcame a series of difficulties, including lack of preparation time towards the end of the semester and designing a set with an atmosphere full of Chinese culture. The whole performance, themed with “the idea of harmony”, is composed by three chapters: “harmony of universe”, “harmony of people” and “harmony of music”. Under the background of red peony curtain, they presented profound Chinese culture and spirits with Chinese folk music, Chinese calligraphy and Chinese martial art.

On the Jan. 22th, 2010, the PKU cultural acting troupe made opening success Lomonosov Moscow State University in Moscow, Russia. Over six hundred people attended the Chinese cultural books exhibition and watched the performance. The rich contents conveyed profound Chinese culture and embodied the idea of harmony, such as the happy melody “Xi Yang Yang”, the female vocal solo “Xiao He Tang Shui”, the dance “The Spirit of the Youth” and “The Chinese Knot” and so on.

“It was a great success and no one will believe it was performed by students”, the President of the Russian branch of the Confucius Institute said, “especially the dance ‘the Spirit of the Youth’, mixed Confuciusm with the modern dancing.”

“The performance carried so much Chinese culture, which made me hope to go to China to feel it for myself”, said by one student from Lomonosov Moscow State University.

It was freezing winter in Russia, so many students in the acting troupe caught colds. However, those students overcame the illness and still pursued the best performance. Their performance in Germany also attracted a myriad of audiences, and some audiences who were not able to get tickets were seen standing outside to watch the show through the window. “It was so fantastic”, said by a German audience member with excitement on his face. Moreover, a lot of audiences seek the actors and actress’s signature and ask when whey will have another show. “I am so proud with my country and my country’s culture when I see the Germans like the performance so much.”

The tour of PKU acting troupe were greatly supported and received by Russian ambassador Li Hui, German ambassador Wu Hong Bo and the Egyptian ambassador. They all gave great compliments to the PKU acting troupe. The acting troupe not only presented the spirits of the modern Chinese university student, they also performed very well the Chinese traditional art. In addition, the ambassadors also said those students made their contributions to the cultural communication between China and foreign countries, and encouraged their study.

On Jan 25th, 2010, it was the 255 anniversary of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Yang He, the chief of the acting troupe and the vice-secretary of the Party Committee presented the President of the Lomonosov Moscow State University with a congratulatory letter from Zhou XiFeng, the president of PKU. Xiao Ming, the vice-president of PKU, approved this performance from the acting troop organized by the Russian branch of the Confucius Institute and stated that PKU will support the Confucius Institute as before.

So far, these performances were widely reported by a large number of newspapers, such as the Parisian Dragon, Guangming Daily and so on, and it was also reported on many websites. There has been more than one hundred reports about this performance by both from Chinese media and foreign media.

Translated by: An Jiang

Edited by: Jennifer Yan

Source: PKU News (Chinese)