by Yophiandi Kurniawan
Deputy of International Relations of Indonesia Cyber Media Network, News Producer, Indonesia
Dear brothers and sisters,
Thank you for the opportunity given to me to express my perspective on China during our five days together in Chongqing.
What I convey is inseparable from my initial perspective after interacting several times with the people of several cities in China, especially Beijing, and also a number of advantages and specialties developed in the city.
In Chongqing, I saw the art of appreciating life and civilization that has been built for thousands of years. It is thousands of years, because even when humans lived with dinosaurs.
Four things bold in a number of counties we visited. First, history and tradition, second, to build food security, third, maintaining the ecosystem, and fourth, developing technology for the human life.
This municipality opened our eyes, that humans remain central of every development of civilization. The Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world today, is the basis for the surrounding community to appreciate their lives.
Rivers, we all know, are an important side of human civilization. Like the Nile in Egypt, which also leads to a number of countries in Africa, the Tigris or Euphrates, the Indus, and the Amazon. In China, there are two famous rivers, namely the Huang He or Yellow River and the Yangtze. I was fortunate to be able to witness and feel the parts of the river in the past four days.
In Chongqing, the government and the community understand the importance of the Yangtze. So the Yangtze River in Yunyang, Wanzhou, Liangping, and Jiangbei, we can see is well managed to become the advantages of each in the region. Basically, for food, water supply and the ecosystem.
The technology, we saw last in Jiangbei, cannot be separated from the role of humans, who created and operated it. Humans who develop because of the contribution of rivers in their lives.
In terms of ecosystem balance, in Liangping, the Yangtze River is a great place to play a role in efforts to reduce the impact of climate change. How the community maintain it. Not only to be enjoyed, but also to be studied and developed with technology, like artificial intelligence. In the lake in Liangping, this AI technology has become a friend to swans and rare birds. Monitoring of the lives of these animals is observed by growing their habitat, the lake, and also trees.
In Wanzhou, Yangtze is a source of agriculture that supports the lives of the people of Chongqing in general. Oranges, plums, tomatoes, guavas, not to mention vegetables that are grown naturally by farmers who are local people, or with greenhouse technology.
History and tradition are maintained in Wanzhou, which still remembers that the area is the hometown of General Gan Ning, one of Sun Quan’s mainstay generals in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or San Quo. The power of remembering who the ancestors are and respecting them is something that can be a trigger for people to advance in the development of the times. So, in Yunyang, Wanzhou’s neighbor, history and tradition are also maintained. Memory is maintained with Zhang Fei and his brothers, who are legendary in the world. The other two, Guan Yu, and Liu Bei, guards of the Wu Kingdom. Another one in Yunyang, is Zhuge Liang. They are important figures in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms from the Shu Kingdom.
In this historical aspect, there is also something that we never missed. Panda. An animal, become the idol of many people in the world for its cuteness and adorable behavior. Panda is history and the present. Previously known, now developed and become part of communication between nations and countries. Sending pandas to many countries is one part of diplomacy that cannot be separated from non-verbal communication.
What I saw and experienced in four days of visiting several places, was a thickening that the Chinese government and its people are on the right track, in the progress of a nation.
The gift of the Yangtze River, and the beautiful mountains, are the source of developing a more complex civilization. Humans are developed to always not only be three-dimensional in developing, but towards four dimensions. As has been shown in the introduction how the international hub terminal in Chongqing, from the tip of China to the tip of Chicago in United States.
Technology as the latest, is developed to help humans. Artificial intelligence is no longer a dream but can be realized with the ability of the community. While the needs of the community, namely food, foster independence for the Chinese nation, of course, again, not forgetting what shaped Chinese civilization so that it could advance as it is today and in the future.
*The views and opinions expressed in the articles are solely those of the individual authors and do not reflect the position of the Secretariat of the Belt and Road Journalist Network.