slender West Lake

Yangzhou is familiar to me but unfamiliar to me. I am familiar with her elegance and depth, but I am unfamiliar with her never really meeting her. When I came to Yangzhou, I thought that the antique atmosphere had long been drowned by the tall and crowded modern buildings. However, I didn't expect that the low and sparse buildings in the city were humbly hidden in the greenery, highlighting the extraordinary size of the sky. The size makes people feel like adding a pair of "wide-angle eyes".

To deconstruct the charm of Yangzhou, we have to indulge in the Longqiuzhuang Ruins, Shenju Mountain, Slender West Lake, Geyuan, Heyuan, Daming Temple, Hanling Garden, Fenghuang Island, Dongguan Old Street, and the Ming and Qing Ancient City, carefully read the beautiful scenery and look at the ancient and modern times.

Walking in the streets and alleys of Yangzhou, it feels like traveling through historical and cultural time and space. It feels like the emperors, generals, literati, and businessmen who meet here slowly bid farewell to Yangzhou not long ago. Their joy, anger and sorrow, their poems, books, piano and paintings, their spirit, and their blood inheritance are all in this city with a history of 2500 years.

Pottery inscriptions, thousands of years older than oracle bone inscriptions, are here, indicating the long history of civilization here; Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty dug the Grand Canal, visited Yangzhou three times, and was buried here. Kangxi and Qianlong visited the south of the Yangtze River for the sixth time, and they would visit Yangzhou every time, where the imperial atmosphere stopped grandly; Chen Lin, one of the "Seven Sons of Jian 'an", Zhang Ruoxu, Bai Juyi, Du Mu, Ouyang Xiu, Su Shi, Qin Guan, the "Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou", etc., all great thinkers, cultural masters, and artistic masters gathered here to shine brightly. It is also the poet immortal Li Bai's words that "Fireworks fall under Yangzhou in March" have become an unparalleled impression of Yangzhou in ancient and modern times.

Impregnated by such historical culture, poetry, painting, calligraphy, tombs, religion, food, gardens, lacquerware, jade carvings, embroidery, velvet flowers and other colorful and wonderful Chinese traditional culture gather here. If anyone understands ancient Yangzhou, one of the nine states, he must understand China. Because "Yangzhou is the most Chinese".

Living in such a city with profound cultural heritage is undoubtedly worth cherishing this city like a person with an extremely prominent cultural family. This is a place where the roots of Chinese culture stretch, and it is also an ancient home nourished by the love of Yangzhou people.

Like all ancient cities in China, Yangzhou has experienced dynasties, baptism of war, cultural catastrophe, urban transformation, etc., but now it can still better protect and present the original historical scenery of the past, presenting an area of more than five square kilometers. The Ancient City is a miracle, which cannot be said to be the grace of destiny. Among the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which was successfully applied for cultural heritage, Yangzhou has 6 sections of river courses and 10 heritage sites, ranking first among the cities along the canal. This is the best example of Yangzhou people's respect for history and culture.

Nearly 20 highest-level honors at home and abroad, including the United Nations Best Living City, China's Famous Historical and Cultural City, China's Outstanding Tourist City, National Civilized City, National Forest City, City of Chinese Poetry, and National Garden City, point to Yangzhou from different perspectives. Long history, culture and beautified ecological environment.

Like some well-known cities in China, Yangzhou's dreams and aspirations are not only in China, but the creation of a "world tourist city" has long been put on the agenda. From the creation of a "world-famous park" in Yangzhou Slender West Lake Scenic Area to the holding of the International Economic and Trade Tourism Festival in March and the World Canal City Expo in the spring and autumn every year, we can see its "ambition to create a world".

Where will the development of modern cities go, and what standards should we use to measure and position ourselves? This is the confusion of many Chinese cities in the face of today's high development. The true development of a city actually depends more on the city's self-feeling and responsibility for the future.

According to Western standards, cities like New York, London, Paris and Tokyo are the world's cities. Even Beijing cannot fall into its eyes and is striving to create it. In fact, this is misleading. The world's cities are not based on their large population and numerous buildings. I have seen many aerial photos of world cities on the Internet. Their complexity is unimaginable. They have lost the true nature of the harmonious development of mankind and nature, and are submerged in the competitive opening up of rising material desires, marching the living history into concrete. Below, it cuts off the opportunity for real exchanges and dialogue between contemporary and history.

My understanding is that world cities should have oriental standards and reflect the charm of the Orient. To a certain extent, if a city does not even have a history of 1000 years or a cultural heritage visible for 500 years, it is not a world city at all. It can only be called the "current world city."

The real world city is not the city as it currently appears, but a three-dimensional city where history and present are superimposed. Yangzhou, it should be the combination of all Yangzhou cities in the Spring and Autumn Period, the Han Dynasty, the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the Republic of China to the present.

In my perception, Yangzhou is a world city, and it objectively lives in the city's galaxy.

During the Western Han Dynasty, Yangzhou became the "largest city in the southeast". At that time, half of the world's wealth came from here; in the late Tang Dynasty, it was even known as "Yang Yi Er"! Even super cities such as Chang 'an and Luoyang can only be seen; Yangzhou salt merchants in the Ming and Qing Dynasties pushed the city's glory to the peak of "being rich and powerful". At that time, there were 10 cities in the world with more than 500,000 residents. China has 6 cities, and Yangzhou ranks among them.

Dong Zhongshu, a great scholar in the Han Dynasty, put forward the idea of "abolishing all schools and respecting Confucianism" during his tenure as the prime minister of Jiangdu during the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, which made great contributions to the development of Confucianism and profoundly influenced the cultural trend of China and neighboring countries; Jianzhen, a monk in the Tang Dynasty, led his people to Japan five times to teach teachings and pioneered the eminent monk of the Japanese Risho. In 10 years, he spread various cultural achievements of the Tang Dynasty and was praised by the Japanese as the "father of culture" and the "ancestor of Risho"; Cui Zhiyuan, a native of Silla, lived in China for 16 years and was an official for more than 8 years. Among them, he served as an official in Yangzhou for 4 years. He returned to his country and held an important position in the Silla Dynasty. He was revered by North Korea and South Korea as the originator of Korean Chinese literature, and had a profound influence on South Korea's future generations. The Italian traveler Marco Polo was appointed as the governor of Yangzhou for 3 years during the rule of Kublai Khan, the Yuan Dynasty's grandfather...

Such a city, such people, and such influence are undoubtedly worldwide. Over time, Yangzhou still exudes a unique and modern charm today, and its economic development is enough to support the safety and prosperity of a city. The transformation from traditional sightseeing to leisure and vacation, from tourist cities to urban tourism, and from "ticket economy" to "industrial economy" should be a wise choice to comply with the development trend.

How to combine the government's development will with the actual needs of the people, do a good job in the tourism and cultural industry, develop the local economy, inherit Chinese civilization, and influence and change the world is not only a development issue that Yangzhou has to face.

I have a colleague who has been to a certain place in Japan and praised him when he came back; a friend who has been to a certain western state in the United States, but he cannot say anything about it; and a colleague who has been to the capital of Egypt and is deeply attracted by it. These people have become diehard fans of these cities and countries, and foreign cultures, concepts, values, etc. have been covered.

What China needs most today is cultural self-confidence and self-reliance. If each historical and cultural city uses tourism to make its own unique efforts to make Chinese cities have more diehard fans like Cui Zhiyuan and Marco Polo, we may not need to add a "V" to our cities based on Western standards and certify them as "certain world cities."

Yangzhou, read your long and distant past, and read through your elegant and bright present. In fact, you are a veritable world city. (Text/Photo Xie Xiaowen)