by Mahmoud Fouly, Abdel-Maguid Kamal
CAIRO, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese pavilion at the recently opened 49th round of Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF) targets cultural exchange and interaction in the first place rather than book selling, Ahmed al-Saeed, CEO of Wisdom House Cuture and Media Group, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
"We seek to make the book fair an interaction platform to bring closer Egyptian students of Chinese language, who are more than 5,000, with Chinese students of Arabic language in Egypt. It also aims to attract those visitors who would like to learn more about the Chinese culture," said the co-founder of Wisdom House publishing group.
Egypt opened on Saturday the 49th round of its two-week CIBF, which is considered the largest and oldest book fair in the Middle East and second largest worldwide after Germany's Frankfurt Book Fair. The CIBF is expected to attract five million visitors this year.
Since its establishment in 2011, Wisdom House, which operates in both Egypt and China, has been focusing on publishing China-related cultural and literary books in Arabic to enhance Sino-Arab cultural exchange.
"This is our fifth consecutive participation in the CIBF with a large 'Chinese Book Pavilion,' which has become popular for Egyptian visitors," Saeed told Xinhua, noting that the pavilion attracted more than 800,000 visitors last year and expecting more this year.
China's pavilion at the fair was crowded with visitors, including Egyptian students of Chinese language, who toured its various sections displaying Arabic written and translated books on China's culture, literature and development experience, besides Chinese learning books and Chinese-Arabic lexicons.
Six Chinese publishing houses take part in the 2018 CIBF, distributed in four pavilions featuring Chinese literary works, educational books, children's books and others, in Chinese, Arabic and English.
"We participate in the fair with 550 new books, 300 of which are translated from Chinese to Arabic and 200 are educational," the Wisdom House senior official continued, "For the first time in the Middle East, there are original lexicons that Arab students of Chinese language can easily get in Cairo instead of their usual suffering of photocopying."
He noted that Wisdom House has now a production line for all Chinese soap operas to be dubbed into Arabic and it also translates about 100 Chinese books into Arabic every year.
"Wisdom House in China has a translation exchange project between China and Arab states where 25 Arabic works are to be translated into Chinese. We have already published 11 of them and the others will be done successively," he added.
Saeed illustrated that the Chinese translation of the Egyptian novels of "Return My Heart" by Youssef al-Seba'i, "Return of the Spirit" by Tawfiq al-Hakim and "The Genius of Muhammad" by Abbas al-Aqqad are currently selling well in China.
Egyptian-Chinese bilateral ties have been elevated to the level of comprehensive strategic partnership with growing economic and cultural cooperation between the two countries in the light of China's Belt and Road Initiative launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.
"Average Egyptian citizens have become curious about China due to its economic leap, beside the interest of thousands of Egyptian students studying Chinese language and a similar number of Egyptians working for Chinese companies," Saeed emphasized.
He explained that the CIBF can serve as a means to exhibit and promote the Chinese culture, "which will surely be further spreading as long as China maintains its progress and keenness on cultural promotion and exchange."
"Initial indicators show that the visitor turnout in the Chinese pavilion is very promising this year," Saeed boasted, noting that ordinary visitors started to know Chinese authors and books by name and learn more about the Chinese president and his Belt and Road Initiative for multinational trade and economic cooperation.
He pointed out that the Middle Eastern policies of following the Western culture proved failure and the people of the region started to think that they should rather follow in the footsteps of a country that started poor and ended up with massive development, such as China, India and Brazil.
"Therefore, the Egyptian average citizen has become eager to know more about China, especially in the light of very good Sino-Arab relations that lack any history of conflicts and share harmonious positions on various issues, particularly that of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict," the publisher told Xinhua.
President Xi made a remarkable speech at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo in January 2016, where he urged dialogue and development as keys for the settlement of regional crises.
"Xi's remarks at the Arab League made ordinary people want to know more about the man, his anti-corruption campaign and his economic, development and cultural initiatives that all sound positive and new to Arab audience," Saeed said, adding that "China uses soft power not brute force."
The Wisdom House official added that the CIBF is visited by an average four million people every year and about one quarter of them visit the Chinese pavilion.
"The fair is undoubtedly a significant communication point between the Arab world and China in the fields of culture and literature," Saeed told Xinhua.
