New Book Preview ｜ Inspiring Shanxi, Bliss on the loess
Date：2022-08-27
David Gosset presents Inspiring Shanxi
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As an ancient civilization, China can display cultural confidence. Such a cultural confidence stands especially high with Shanxi's beauties. We are deeply moved by Shanxi. It is why we want to use the 21st century Silk Roads to take Shanxi's forms, sounds and scents to the world. This is the meaning of Inspiring Shanxi.
Full Text
Shanxi, contiguous to the Yellow River, is a land of culture. One of the ways to introduce a country of 1.4 billion people is to present the different elements composing such an immense and complex society. It can be said of such a method that it is “kaleidoscopic”, a notion whose three Greek terms – kalos, beautiful; eidos, form; and, skopeo, to examine – literally mean “the observation of beautiful forms”.
It explains the making of Inspiring Tianjin in 2021. The success of this publication led us to conceive Inspiring Shanxi.
Inspiring Shanxi is organized as a polyphony. Different voices offer their unique perspective on a province having a multi-millennial history, a rich geography, and which is inhabited today by 37 million people. This polyphony resonates beyond one language since each text will be available in Chinese, English, and French.
We do not aim at the making of a definitive encyclopedia on Shanxi, but more modestly, we are proposing an introduction to this province. Stimulated by the collection of essays that will be presented, it is our hope that some readers will find it meaningful to deepen the research on the region.
However, Shanxi is for the senses.
The ceramic it produces can be touched, its exquisite food exists to be tasted, and its dialects and songs to be heard. While the fragrance of its Fenjiu allures olfaction, the palette of yellows scintillating in the horizon of a creative geology metamorphoses into a visual feast.
Whether from China or from abroad, may travelers come to peregrinate over a land of surprises.
Bliss on the loess, as I call it, they will feel.
