Beijing, China – November 11, 2026 – The China International Publishing Center (CIPC) issued a press release here on Wednesday to promote an article written by Tony Brown, juror of the Third Orchid Awards, lifetime professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and distinguished professor at Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai).

The full text of the article is as follows:

I felt deeply honoured to receive the invitation to serve on the prestigious jury for the Third Orchid Awards. As an artist working within culture‑related fields, this assignment resonated personally, and it brought me back to a formative memory from my years as a student in Montreal. In the city’s downtown core sits Norman‑Bethune Square, a public urban plaza housing the monument to Norman Bethune, the Canadian surgeon. The sculpture was created by Situ Jie (1920–2005), a distinguished professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, who also served as Honorary Professor at the Ontario College of Art in Canada. In his own career, Situ Jie also became a bridge between cultures. A gift from China to the City of Montreal, it stands at the intersection of De Maisonneuve Boulevard and Guy Street, close to where I studied at Concordia University, though it is not situated on the university campus itself.

From my perspective as an artist, this public work stood out as a powerful, concrete symbolic reference. Public sculpture can act as vital cultural glue for society; it brings abstract ideas into shared public space, making cross‑cultural legacies tangible for passers‑by, rather than leaving them confined to books or archives. Encountering this monument sparked my curiosity and led me to research Bethune’s astonishing history. Bethune travelled to China during the Second Sino‑Japanese War. He brought battlefield medical expertise, established mobile field hospitals, and trained generations of Chinese medical workers, ultimately sacrificing his life after contracting sepsis while performing front‑line surgery. Though his extraordinary humanitarian work unfolded thousands of kilometres away in China, his legacy is honoured publicly in his home country of Canada. This city‑centre memorial became for me an early, tangible lesson: individuals can build powerful cross‑cultural bonds, making lasting contributions to a nation not their own, while also becoming living ambassadors who shift perceptions within their own society.

That memory resonated strongly as I joined the jury sessions in Beijing this September. Over the years, I have taken part in many international jury panels, and this process stood out for its care and rigour. We reviewed thirty shortlisted candidates spanning arts, literature, sport, mathematics, heritage, education and grassroots people‑to‑people diplomacy, representing more than two dozen countries across the globe.

What struck me deeply was the remarkable diversity of these nominees. Each of them has delivered tangible, meaningful contributions inside China — advancing education, arts, sports, science and heritage conservation. Yet their impact extends well beyond China’s borders. These men and women function as living ambassadors, like Norman Bethune, the very first example I encountered: they carry the insights, relationships and understanding they have built in China back to their home societies. They become shining examples, building durable bridges between China and their own countries, nurturing two‑way cultural exchange rather than one‑sided storytelling.

After the jury meeting in Beijing, I travelled onward to Xi’an and Hanzhong in Shaanxi province, where I took part in interviews and cultural salon discussions alongside other international jurors. Walking the ancient capital, once the starting point of the Silk Road, drove home a powerful truth: cross‑cultural exchange is not a modern invention. For millennia this city was where ideas, art, technologies and worldviews met and enriched one another. The ancient Silk Road was never about one‑sided cultural dominance; it was about interaction, adaptation and shared growth. Today, the Belt and Road Initiative put forward by President Xi Jinping exemplifies this age‑old tradition of openness and exchange, breathing contemporary life into that historic spirit. That very same spirit animates today’s Global Civilization Initiative, of which the Orchid Awards is a key practical platform.

As we assessed candidates, we repeatedly returned to this guiding vision in the Volume V of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China: “We should jointly advocate respect for the diversity of civilizations. Countries should uphold the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness among civilizations. It is important that cultural exchanges prevail over estrangement, mutual learning over clash, and inclusiveness over superiority.” Different histories, institutions and lived experiences do not need to create confrontation. Instead they create opportunities to listen, absorb new perspectives and advance together.

Our task as jurors was not to judge cultures against one uniform standard, but to recognise people who embody this ideal of respectful engagement across civilizational lines.

In our contemporary world, we face shared global challenges that no single nation can solve alone. Cultural exchange and mutual learning are not soft luxuries; they are practical foundations for international cooperation. The Orchid Awards honours those quiet bridge‑builders who dedicate years of their lives to this work. My time on the jury and my conversations in Xi’an reinforced my conviction: the more we encourage genuine face‑to‑face encounters across cultural boundaries, the better equipped humanity will be to navigate our common future.

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