In Lianyungang City, the "World Music Conference" seemed more
like a fantasy idea than a big musical project. However, the
initiator of the project has exclusively reached out to
China.org.cn over the weekend, trying to clear some pending doubts
that anyone may have.
Zhang Wenli
This man is Zhang Wenli, an editing director of the
Symphony magazine and Chinese cultural curator. In the late 1990's,
he co-organized a poetry praying campaign for world peace where
over a hundred nation's leaders joined together under the name of
the UN.
As China.org.cn learned in last December, World Music Conference
and its supporting project World Music Town will make up the new
city construction program. A headquarter Tower, a museum, a scenery
park, a square, a giant opera, a world music university, TV tower,
various particular music halls, supporting service center, and more
will be built.
Billed as the "Musical Olympics," the World Music Conference
will be a permanent presentation platform to hold bi-annual musical
competition events, as well as a platform for music experts and
fans to learn and communicate.
The plans were examined and later recognized by experts and
officials, including Du Yue, the secretary-general of UNESCO
National Commission of the People's Republic of China. They
believed Lianyungang was capable of hosting the idea.
When planning for blank city areas, the imagination can run
wild. On January 11, Lianyungang's tourism bureau sent the latest
news to China.org.cn that the city has been chosen as one of the
100 most competitive cities for tourism at a first annual
conference to discuss tourism competition abilities in China. This
may add to Lianyungang's list of qualifications for developing the
world music center, if they can use music's name to promote local
tourism.
China.org.cn called Li Daoying, the city's vice
secretary-general and director of the tourism bureau on February 5,
to inquire how the project was progressing. Li said that everything
seems to be going well and the plans have been handed in to the Jiangsu provincial government for discussion.
When the provincial government and experts examine and pass the
project, it will go on to the state department. However, this was
not what had been promised by the Vice Mayor Zhu Hao, who said in
December that they would submit it as a national project to the
National Development and Reform Commission for approval as early as
the next month.?
According to some documents of Lianyungang government, the city
is the only one in China able to host this project because the city
has so many acres of abandoned salt fields to recycle and make use
of. Their big quantity of available lands needs no central or
provincial government's approval. Municipal approval is enough.
"This is not necessarily true," Zhang Wenli countered,
explaining that Beihai in Guangxi Province was his first thought. In
fact, he brought the project to the Beihai government in the late
1990s. Beihai started preparing for the project over the course of
a few years, but eventually gave it up due to financial problems
and weak infrastructure.
Zhang Wenli believes that the 21st century will be a century of
Chinese or, at the least, oriental culture. Like what Professor Ji
Xianlin, a famous Chinese linguist, Sanskrit scholar and literary
translator, has said, world culture has two systems, -- one is
western, the other is eastern. The western system is based on
analyzation; the eastern system is based on integration. When the
western system can't resolve the practical problems it causes, the
eastern system will be the way out. Zhang said it is the same for
the art of music and thinks that western music has hit a
dead-end.
World Music Conference, initially named International Musical
Contest, was inspired by the Olympics, Zhang said. "The ultimate
tenet of establishing the World Music Conference is to promote full
development of the world's music and its industry, especially to
narrow the gap between eastern and western music."
The idea seems too ambitious to be true. What can attract
governments, music artists, experts, organizations and businessmen
to put all the resources in Lianyungang, which is hardly at the
center of anything. Zhang and government officials are constantly
questioned by the city's lack of musical tradition as well. But
Zhang is still confident in his own solution.
"Lianyungang is perfect. World Music Conference just needs a
white paper," he explained. "It's a platform, and it will be easy
to form a city theme."
He said various so-called international musical contests and
awards, such as Russia's International Tchaikovsky Competition,
Poland's International Chopin Piano Competition, Vienna's
International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition and even the
United States' Grammy Awards, are actually competitions of one
nation or under certain non-government organizations' names, though
they are enlarging their channels, scales and categories. Zhang
believes that it is now time to establish the top platform above
all of these to enhance global musical communication.
Through his contacts, he had sent several letters about this to
UNESCO in the early 2000s.? China.org.cn has obtained several
exclusive scanned mail replies from UNESCO to him, urging him to
send this project by official channels through China's UNESCO
National Commission, which approved the idea last December. Zhang
Wenli said UNESCO officials are very interested, including Ko?chiro
Matsuura, the director general of UNESCO. He thinks that UNESCO
wants a grand global event under its name, since it cannot own
Olympics, World Cup and World Expo.
After Beihai abandoned the project, Zhang Wenli met Li Daoying
at a culture forum in 2001. Li was interested in the project and
persuaded Zhang to move the project to Lianyungang, which was eager
to boost its economy and city construction.
In June 2005, Zhang Wenli wrote a letter to Li Yuanchao,
secretary of the Jiangsu Provincial CPC Committee and then got a
positive response in July. Soon later, Chen Xin, the president of
Thailand-based Huanglongtai Group, and many other international
investing companies became interested and registered a new company
for the project. They signed cooperation agreements with the
Lianyungang government on August 27.
However, the pace of the project will not be fast as it will be
reviewed again and again by multi-level governments, then China and
its experts will have to persuade all the governments in the world
to make Lianyungang the world music center. It will no doubt take
many years and it's impossible to hold the first conference in
2009, as Lianyungang officials expected, Zhang said. He also
realized that it is indeed difficult to persuade other nations,
especially a superpower such as America which has a much more
developed music industry than China, to participate in the project
and events.
So, he compromised and said that his real thought is to
establish the highest competition platform, and it doesn't really
matter where it is built. China can lend a hand for this, just like
United States lent a hand for the United Nations in New York.
Lianyungang is just a choice for the entire world and the city is
trying to be the one. Zhang said China shouldn't complete the
project alone. All the governments should discuss and review the
matters related to the World Music Conference, and then agree to
co-sign a manifesto to put the music center on the land that they
all agree on. It could be Lianyungang, and it also could be a place
in Australia, America, Africa, or Europe.
Another document exclusively obtained by China.org.cn show a
calculation that Zhang and his partners once figured out. They
expected the first music conference, if successfully held, would
earn a net gross income of 2.3 billon yuan (US$296.7 million),
attracting 300,000 visitors. He also believes that the platform
could enhance the development for the Third World countries'
musical culture, especially those in the ancient African lands.
(China.org.cn by staff reporter Zhang Rui, February 15,
2007)
