The Belief Under The Burj Khalifa:

We Originate From The Same Place And Will Inevitably Reach The Same Place

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Cao Shui, the executive chairman of the Silk Road International Poetry Art Festival

 

When I was a child, I fantasized about traveling from Chan'an in Asia to Rome in Europe along the ancient Silk Road, passing through Arabia because it was once the center of the world. Today my dream came true, I met everyone in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

 

Before arriving in Dubai, I had imagined the Burj Khalifa, and I had written poems for this modern Tower of Babel multiple times. We all know the story of the Tower of Babel. When people came to build the Tower of Babel, God knew that and disrupted their language. People stopped building it because they couldn't communicate, and they dispersed around the world, becoming more than two thousand ethnic groups. We come from the same place, and we will eventually come to the same place. This is also the theme of my Epic of Eurasia, and of course, it is also the theme of Manseerah, Epic of Humanity created by Adel Khozam, who organized 86 famous artists from around the world. He created the beginning of this poem, and I created the end. In the second half, we will tell everyone. This is also the core proposition of the Great Poetry Movement that I advocate, which integrates ancient and modern cultures, integrates East and West cultures, and integrates sacred and secular cultures.

I would like to deeply thank my friend, the poet Adel Khozam, the Honorary President and partner of this year’s festival edition, who made exceptional efforts to ensure the festival’s success. He coordinated our participation, selected the poems, nominated the winners from the United Arab Emirates, and prepared the cultural materials about the UAE for the World Poets magazine. With his support, I translated three poems and the articles dedicated to His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the inspiring figure for the Poets of the Silk Road. I was profoundly moved by His Highness’s poetry, and for that reason, I hope to translate his complete collection Poems from the Desert into Chinese.

Today's world is a globalized world, and Arab civilization originated from the ancient Babylonian civilization. There were once seven major civilizations on the Eurasian continent, from Babylon, westward to Canaan, Egypt, Greece, eastward to Persia, India, and China. We must break out of our own civilization and integrate into a new world civilization. Today under the Burj, the tallest building in the world, the modern Tower of Babel, we should believe that humanity originated from the same place and will inevitably move towards the same place.