Reading with Xi Jinping | Salute to China

In 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid his visit to Chile and felt very much at home in the country, which is known as "the land where the earth ends." In his eyes, although China and Chile are far away from each other, the two peoples enjoy a long history of interactions and profound friendship.

Pablo Neruda, a Nobel Prize laureate in Literature and famous Chilean poet, paid multiple visits to China and wrote poems such as Saludo a China (Salute to China), Canción de la tierra China (The Song of the Land of China) and El Viento de la Asia (The Wind in Asia), in which he expressed his love and best wishes for China. His works have been widely read in China with influence on many Chinese poets.

It's precisely because there are many models of China-Latin America cultural and people-to-people exchanges like Neruda that Xi called on China and Chile to "expand cultural and people-to-people exchanges and consolidate traditional friendship" so that "the friendship between the two peoples will be carried forward from generation to generation."

"From sea to ocean, from plains to snowy mountains, the world’s different ethnicities behold you, China! You are such a strong brother that arises among us. Your image, once seen as an impoverished woman leaning by the old temple, has now turned into that of a powerful warrior loved by the people. You hold the weapon symbolizing victory in one hand, and a crescent-shaped ear of wheat in the other. The fate of many ethnicities lies on your shoulders."

"Even mountains and seas cannot distance people with common aspirations." Since 2013, Xi has visited Latin America multiple times and quoted famous Latin American figures and works on many occasions. In regard to promoting China-Latin America cultural and people-to-people exchanges, China has been practicing Xi's vision of "upholding the beauty of each civilization and the diversity of civilizations in the world" with concrete actions.