According to news reports, Prime Minister KP Oli will seek Chinese assistance to develop physical connectivity during his upcoming China visit. While one may or may not like the idea of railways and highways connecting the two countries, depending on one’s (geo)political leanings, one thing is certain: unless there is an emotional bond between the peoples of China and Nepal neither side will be able to take full advantage of the expensive infrastructures. So far, at the people’s level, we feel emotionally detached when dealing with the Chinese and vice-versa because we have only focused on the obvious differences between the two countries. For some strange reason, we have completely overlooked the role of culture in our relations. Culture shapes our thinking and worldview, and hence cultural understanding can be an important tool to promote people-to-people ties and to further strengthen political relations between the two countries.
Contrary to the widely-held belief, Nepal and China are not distant culturally. There are many similarities between us. For example, the traditional Chinese culture, like our own, emphasizes filial piety, and it even has the Stove God, akin to our family deity. The guardian deity of Beijing is yamantak, or vajrabhairava—a manifestation of the lord Shiva. Avalokiteswara is worshipped in China as the Guanshiyin—the one who sees and hears.
Just as in Nepal, red is the color of happiness and white is the color of mourning. Like us, the Chinese view srivatsa (endless knot) and fish as auspicious symbols. Even the Chinese creation myth (‘pangu kai tiandi’) is similar to the Hindu creation myth of purusha sukta in the Rig Veda.
And just like us, for the majority of Chinese, family still matters and an individual’s identity is closely tied that to his/her family, unlike in the “individualistic” west. Hence, like Nepali and unlike the English language, the Chinese language has different kinship terminologies for all relations.
It’s a pity that Nepal has failed to explore ways to use the cultural similarities to its advantage in dealing with China. Our norther neighbor has for long been doing its bit by offering academic degrees in Nepali language and basic classes on Nepali society in one of the universities in Beijing. Starting this fall, Nepali will be offered as an academic course in two more universities in Yunnan and Tibet.
We talk about good relation with China, but are yet to offer academic degrees on Chinese studies. The Chinese language curriculum offered, even at the Chinese-government funded Confucius Institute at the Kathmandu University (CIKU), is pathetic. All it does is disseminate “China is great” propaganda and produce tour guides with rudimentary Chinese. Although many Nepali students and professionals are keen to learn about China, sadly, there is no place to satisfy their academic urge.
PM Oli, maybe you can talk to your hosts about jointly establishing an autonomous “real” China-Nepal Studies Center in Nepal. It will academically train Nepalis on China, and offer classes to the interested Chinese scholars on Nepal. It can be modeled after the Johns Hopkins Nanjing Center, China.
To make the Nepal center credible and serve real academic purpose, it should be allowed to design the curriculum on its own, without pressure from either government. It should be free to teach classes on the current political, economic, ethnic and social problems in both China and Nepal, so that the students gain a real insight into the countries they are studying. It should produce Nepali sinologists who can fluently recite the lines from gu wen (classical literature) to the poems of Gu Cheng, and the Chinese Nepal experts who can quote from the works of Bhanubhakta to Bhupi Sherrchan.
Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders. National interests and differing priorities will eventually lead to various problems/misunderstandings between the two countries in the future. Then, who knows, the graduates of the Nepal Center could be the ones representing their respective governments to solve the issues. Unlike the present leaders, they will know exactly how each other’s minds operate and they will thus be able to find mutually acceptable solutions, no matter how serious the underlying problems.
A good idea, isn’t it PM Oli?
