On the morning of November 24th, the Agricultural Civilization and Rural Culture Revitalization Symposium was held in SCAU in Hongmantang. The forum was jointly sponsored by the China Agricultural History Society, the Rural Revitalization Strategy Research Institute, the China Agricultural Historical Heritage Institute, the School of Humanities and Law and the Guangzhou Agricultural Cultural Heritage Research Base. More than 130 experts and scholars from the Rural Economic Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, the China Agricultural Museum, the Chinese Academy of Forestry, Nanjing Agricultural University, Northwest University of Agriculture and Forestry, Yunnan Agricultural University, Beijing Forestry University, Sun Yat-sen University, Shanxi Normal University, Liaoning University, Heilongjiang University, etc attended. The forum focused on agricultural civilization and rural culture revitalization in the new era, the latest agricultural research results, and the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy.

Cao Xingsui, former vice chairman of the Chinese Society of Agricultural History, Niu Baojun, inspector of the Agricultural and Rural Affairs Department of Guangdong Province, and Zhong Yangjin, deputy secretary of the Party Committee of SCAU, attended the opening ceremony and delivered speeches.

Prof. Huang Guowen, Changjiang Scholar Chair Professor of the Ministry of Education and Dean of the School of Foreign Studies, gave a report on the theme “village is the base point for the construction of ecological civilization”. He pointed out that the revitalization of rural culture involves the protection of rural dialects and the way rural people speak, and that respecting the differences in and diversity of languages equals respecting the diversity of rural culture.

Parallel sessions were held in the afternoon with the five topics of “Inheritance, Protection and Utilization of Farming Civilization”, “Exploration and Inheritance of Agricultural Cultural Heritage”, “Rural Intellectuals, Clans and Rural Culture Construction”,“Folklore and Countryside Research” and “Practice and Experience in Contemporary Rural Culture Construction”.

(Report by Qin Jianhua)