Peking University to Host Symposium Commemorating Tagore's Centennial Visit to China

One of the best universities in the People's Republic of China, Peking University, will host a symposium on Rabindranath Tagore and his global vision in May of this year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Tagore's visit.

During a media briefing here, Zha Liyou, the general consul of China in Calcutta, disclosed the ruling of his nation's central university.

"The program at Peking University, which Tagore visited a century ago, is being prepared for... It's scheduled for sometime in May of this year," Liyou said.

Along with distinguished Visva-Bharati professors, Tagore traveled to China for many months after receiving an invitation to give a series of seminars for the first time on April 12, 1924. In 1928, the Nobel laureate returned to the nation.

Liyou claims that his office is arranging for academics and Tagore researchers to attend the symposium, and that the institution is asking a few Indian experts to take part.

According to a source at Visva-Bharati, the consulate has already been in touch with university administrators to request the names of the academics who would be participating in the centennial celebrations of Rabindranath Tagore's historic first visit to China.

Scholars from Chinese departments are often assigned to these kinds of programs in China. We have been asked to send two or three scholars to Peking University this time around. The names have not yet been decided upon. Before sending someone there, we must get authorization from the Union Ministry of External Affairs," a top Visva-Bharati official said.

Peking University is not the only academic institution preparing celebrations to mark Tagore's first journey to China, which included stops in Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Jinan, among other cities. The journey was not without controversy, as his beliefs on spiritualism and romanticism aroused criticism during a time of political and social turbulence in China.

Despite the conflicts, Tagore managed to arrange the construction of the Cheena Bhavana at Visva-Bharati, which was constructed as a center of Sino-Indian cultural study under the patronage of Professor Tan Yun-Shan.

Liyou said that Santiniketan memorial activities were being considered by the consulate in Calcutta.

According to a source at the Visva-Bharati center, the department of Chinese studies and the embassy were in discussions about inviting Chinese experts to mark the centennial of Tagore's visit to China during the first week of April.

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