CHENGDU, China – The English Book Series of The Symphony of Poetry and Tea: Tianfu Culture in Four Seasons was published on December 22 in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in southwest China. The series was edited by The Research Institute of Tianfu Culture Center for Urban Cultural Studies and Communication of Chengdu University, to showcase the unique personality, lifestyle, and aesthetics of Chengdu to the world, and promote cultural exchanges and mutual understanding between China and foreign countries.
Chengdu, an international metropolis with a population of tens of millions in China, enjoys a history of more than 2,300 years. Speaking of the city, people usually think of a few key words: home to giant panda, poetry palace, Sichuan teahouse, a livable and well-being city. The translation series also covers the most representative elements of “poetry” and “tea” extracted from the Chengdu culture to epitomize the historical and cultural relics and contemporary creations of the city.
The poetry and tea not only serve as a bridge for value expression and promotion, but also the carrier that spreads a lifestyle of elegance, easiness and simpleness.
Chengdu has long been a place for prosperity of literature and art since ancient times. Li Bai and Du Fu, the two great sages in the history of Chinese poetry, had deep connections with Chengdu. In 2020, the lens for filming the documentary Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet amplified the focuses on Chengdu to recall the lifetime and masterpieces of Du Fu, telling how the great poet and his works have become a representative and a symbol in the spiritual world of Chinese people.
This poetic sentiment spreads across the historical and cultural context of the city, influencing the development of culture and art in Chengdu abidingly and generating a steady stream of vitality for literary creation that has no longer limited to poetic form for a long time.
Just like great poets coming forward in multitudes, Chengdu is the home to several young, middle-aged and senior generations of sci-fi writers, from here the Chinese sci-fi literature growing and spreading to the world. Chengdu won the bid to host the 2023 Worldcon at the 79th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in Washington DC on December 18, 2021. Chengdu will be the first city in China to host the Worldcon.
The thriving of literature and art is inseparable from the rich local spiritual and cultural life. People in Chengdu love to interact with people and organize diversified cultural and recreational activities in urban public spaces, among which the teahouse is the main venue for public life in Chengdu.
As one of the earliest regions in China to plant, drink and sell teas, Chengdu enjoys a long history of tea culture which will never fade along with worldwide recognition of tea culture and the development of the city.
Due to the love and fascination of Chengdu people for tea, no any other city in China has as many teahouses as Chengdu. According to historical records, as early as the end of Qing Dynasty, there were 454 teahouses throughout Chengdu. The teahouses scattered all over streets have become a unique scenery and a symbol of folk culture, which has not changed to this day.
Recently, the BBC documentary One Cup, A Thousand Stories has been filmed at a 120-year-old teahouse in Chengdu to trace the Chengdu stories of tea. The executive producer Matthew Springford said, “Tea has become more popular today. In the past 10 years, tea consumption has increased by 25%, and billions of people around the world are enjoying this drink.”
With the changes of the times, the teahouses in Chengdu have long changed from the “only” in public to “one of”. Today, Chengdu has developed into a diversified city full of cafes, teahouses, museums, and bookstores. In 2021, there were more than 4,000 coffee shops, 159 museums, and more than 3,600 bookstores and reading spaces around Chengdu.
The integration of traditional atmosphere and modern vitality makes the present and future of this city full of charm. The symphony of poetry and tea continues, and more new movements will be performed with the development of the city.
