2009 was a boom year for cultural exchange between China and Germany, featuring varied events and the launch of new Chinese culture and language institutes.

With an enhanced political role and economic strength, China is also unleashing its soft power of culture overseas.

Chinese flavour to Frankfurt Book Fair

China organised hundreds of promotions at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which opened on Oct. 13, with China as its Guest of honor.

Some 270 publishers and more than 2,000 traders from the Chinese mainland participated in the fair, the world's largest and most important of its kind.

"The openness of China is more than we could have expected. And visitors have got their own pictures of China," said the fair's director, Juergen Boos.

During the six-day event, thousands of visitors were lured into the China Theme Pavilion, which featured a winding wall made of tens of thousands of books and a huge types matrix.

It integrated typical Chinese culture elements with modern visual art, creating the quintessential Chinese culture space quite different from the European culture familiar to local visitors.

Everyday, visitors poured into the pavilion to experience Chinese culture at their doorstep.

A German receptionist working at the information desk said he could not give an exact figure of the visitors, but it had been much more than at guest country pavilions in previous years.

More than 100 renowned Chinese authors and scholars, including Yu Hua, Lin Yifu and Wang Meng, also attended the book fair.

"China has, for the past eight months, presented for the book fair 612 events, made over 1,000 copyrights deals, and exported 2,417 Chinese book copyrights," said Wu Shulin, deputy chief of China's General Administration of Press and Publication.

On the square in front of the China pavilion, a huge tent housed a show of Chinese intangible cultural heritage. Ten masters of Chinese traditional arts and crafts, including paper cuts and Tibetan religious painting known as Tangka, captivated the audience with their exquisite skills.

"The live and vivid show has shortened the distance between local visitors and Chinese culture," said He Yan, president of China's Central Compilation & Translation Press, who was in charge of China's contribution.

Colorful art and cultural events

Reina, an eight-year-old German girl, watched Chinese Kunqu Opera "Floating Dream" in Berlin with her father on Nov. 27.

Though Reina knew nothing about Kunqu Opera and couldn't speak Chinese, she still appreciated the wonderful performances of the actors.

"I thought their singing skills are very intriguing and their movements are also very interesting. It's quite different from what I had imagined before," she said.

The performers came from Suzhou where Kunqu originated more than 600 years ago. The performance was a hugely popular event, having sold out all 400 tickets two weeks in advance.

Gabriele Minz, the organizer, said: "The Kunqu Opera 'Floating Dream' has been staged in Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Berlin, and it will then go to Munich. The show was a great success and it impressed local audiences and media quite a lot."

"People in Germany are becoming more and more interested in China. I hope I can bring more performances with Chinese characteristics to Germany," she said.

Wu Hongbo, Chinese Ambassador to Germany, said: "The fact that a Chinese opera could generate so much repercussion on distant shores shows that culture is a communication through the mind, and it sometimes does not need language to help."