China Matters releases a talk show series on the development of southwest China’s Guizhou Province. The six-episode talk show, named The Talk with Guizhou, invites six guests from China and abroad to share their views on topics such as how Guizhou promotes rural revitalization, how local culture can give a boost to its tourism industry and how the province can build a better ecosystem.
In this episode, China Matters talks to David Bartosch, a distinguished research fellow at Beijing Normal University Zhuhai Campus. He shares with us his take on Wang Yangming’s Thought and how the ancient Chinese philosophy can facilitate Guizhou’s tourism development in modern age.
“When I visited Guizhou province in 2005, I got attentive on Wang Yangming and his thought,” says Bartosch, “and I started to become very interested in it.”
Wang Yangming (1472-1529), a Chinese Neo-Confucian philosopher, spoke out against the cruelty of a well-known courtier and was thus banished to remote Guizhou in the early 16th century. In his doctrine, all humans possess innate knowledge of good and evil and we must act upon our inborn conscience.
Bartosch believes that the Yangming culture can be a starting point to develop various forms of cultural industries and tourism. “By making people become more attentive towards nature and themselves, it can encourage personal self-cultivation and development,” he explains.
Guizhou, for Bartosch, is a blessed place with great traditions, diverse ethnic minority groups and numerous intangible cultural heritages.
“All of these complementary elements that make the life so livable in Guizhou province, they can be experienced on the spot,” he says.