Hangzhou (People's Daily) - The opening ceremony of the first "2020 Silk Road Week" (SRW) was held on Saturday at the China National Silk Museum (NSM).
Photos: China National Silk Museum
SRW is organized by the National Cultural Heritage Administration and the People’s Government of Zhejiang Province, on the theme of "The Silk Road: Mutual Learning for Future Collaborations", which takes its inspiration from the idea that, the surviving remains of the cultural heritage of the Silk Road tells us that it is a history of global civilization. When we look back on past collaborations and how we have learned with and from each other, we see that this can help us promote mutual cooperation in the future.
At this important moment in the shared destiny of human development, in order to construct the defenses for peace in the minds of men, the cultural heritage of the Silk Road can be an agreed foundation and a starting point for future collaborations. It will last till June 24, 2020.
The idea for an annual "Silk Road Week" was first raised on June 21, 2019, when the International Association for the Study of Silk Road Textiles (IASSRT) and the Chinese Museums Association’s Committee of Museums along the Silk Road jointly proposed the “Hangzhou Initiative for Dissemination and Promotion of the Silk Road Spirit”, which aimed to better recognize and draw on the contents and value of the Silk Road, and to strengthen the protection of the Silk Road sites and relics.
The plan for the SRW is that within the week around June 22 each year, museums and other institutions around the world organize activities, including exhibitions, performances, reports, and seminars, to mark and celebrate the anniversary of the Silk Road - from Chang’an to the Tianshan Corridor - becoming a UNESCO World Heritage location on June 22, 2014.
Associated Activities
This year marks a special circumstances for organizing an event, as people are obliged to stay at home, so NSM came up with celebrating a virtual and real Silk Road Week while involving more than 200 museums and institutions all over the world.
Online coloring game of Silk Road patterns for children and teenagers, and the organizer has already received more than 500 adorable works from all over the world.
Different online academic seminars focused on silk road have been held too, such as the "Culture evolution and environmental changes along the Ancient Silk Road", which is initiated by "ANSO Association for Trans-Eurasia Exchange and Silk-Road Civilization Development " (ATES) and hosted online by the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences and NSM; the Sino-Portuguese Cultural Exchange on the Silk Roads which is co-organized by NSM, Confucius Institute of University of Coimbra and Palestras China-Portugal to discuss about the cultural exchanges between China and Portugal.
Besides, as the situation in China gets better, different offline activities have been organized before the official opening of SRW on June 19, such as the "Belt and Road" Book Exhibition, Silk Road art salon, and education of silk knowledge in schools.
(Cimpiled by Xu Zheqi)