By Zhang Jiaxin
BEIJING, Sept. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, Greece can participate in communications between different cultures with respect and can coexist peacefully with others in friendship, said Greek Minister of Culture and Sports Lydia Koniordou.
The minister said this to Xinhuanet in an interview on Saturday during her visit to China to attend a series of activities under the framework of “Greece-China 2017 Year of Cultural Exchanges and Cooperation in Creative Industries”.
With Belt and Road Initiative, Greek culture can develop with respect for other cultures, said the minister.
Greece has always been a crossroad civilization which absorbs different influence and creates a new one, she said.
Greek and Chinese officials have discussed creating a framework to continue collaboration in cultural field in next year, she said.
“We are very enthusiastic about this idea because we have two ancient cultures that go so back and so deep,” she said.
Speaking of the potential cooperation fields, she said Greece could collaborate with China in the field of theatre as China has a beautiful tradition in theatre culture.
The minister said she inaugurated a department on ancient Greek drama in Shanghai Theatre Academy a few days ago.
With more collaboration, Greece and China will further promote the art of theatre by giving more exchange performances of classic works, she added.
Another important cooperation field is literature translation, she said.
“A lot of classic works have already been translated into Chinese, but this is not the case with more contemporary authors, play writers and poets,“ she said.
“We wish to display these poets, writers and literature to Chinese public," she said.
"And also translate Chinese contemporary texts to Greek so that we can present them to our Greek public,” the minister added.
