A research program of Class2022Specialized Graduate Students in Excellent Traditional Chinese Culture of the Joint Graduate School of Nishan World Center for Confucian Studies were held in mid to late August. Over 300 master and doctoral students visited Confucian historical and cultural sites in Qufu, Zoucheng and Jiaxiang, Shandong Province, to experience the profound power of traditional Chinese culture, which has been passed down through thousands of years, and to cultivate cultural confidence.

At Confucius Research Institute of China, the trainees went to the meeting room,where General Secretary Xi Jinping held a symposium during his visit to Confucius Research Institute of China,and reviewedthe important instruction on enhancing cultural confidence and promoting Chinese fine traditional culture given by General Secretary Xi during the visit in 2013. Inspired by the instruction, the trainees allbecame determined to safeguard the cultural roots of the Chinese nation withstrong cultural confidence and to contribute to the continuous renewal of the Chinese civilization.

PresidentXi Jinping’s visit to Confucius Research Institute of China and the symposium held with experts and scholars in 2013

Through experiencing traditional cultural events, including playing the guqin (a seven-stringed plucked instrument in some ways similar to the zither), playing go, burning incense (one of the cultivated pleasures of a leisurely life), playing pitch-pot game (a game in which the participants threw arrows into a pot) and rubbing (an activity of copying texts and drawings on stone tablets or artifacts), the trainees appreciated the harmony andunity of consciousness and matter, content and form, phenomenon and essence, material and craft, as well aspracticalityand beauty. They also visited the exhibition of “The Great Master Confucius”, drawing wisdom from Confucianism and experiencing the elegantstyle and ways of Confucian scholars,which have lasted for thousands of years.