Your Excellency Ambassador Gourdault-Montagne,
Dear friends and colleagues,
Good evening!
Thank you very much, Ambassador, for your generous remarks.
It is an honor of a lifetime for me to be awarded by the French government the “Insignia of the French Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters.” This is not only a reward for my long-time effort in promoting film and cultural exchanges between China and France, and more broadly, the world, but also an encouragement and inspiration for me and my team in carrying our endeavor forward into the future.
I also owe my great thanks to all of you, distinguished guests and friends and my family members. Thank you for your coming. All of you are very important to me. Our gather-together today is doomed to be one of my most precious pieces of my memory.
About a month ago, our crew happened to be shooting a program in Paris when the horrific terror attacks took place. We were utterly shocked. The whole world has condemned extreme terrorism and expressed sympathy and solidarity for the French people, who have moved us --and all those who can still think rationally-- with their resilience and optimism as they were coping with this tragedy.
When attending the concert dedicated to the 130 victims of the Paris terror attacks, President Hollande said that “we will respond to the army of fanatics with more songs, concerts and shows…we will not give in either to fear or to hate.” I applaud this attitude, which reminds me of “The Last Lesson” by the 19th century French writer, Alphonse Daudet. The prose, which I learnt from my Chinese middle school textbook, not only told us that “French was the most beautiful language in the world--the clearest, the most logical,” but also stirred our souls with the “VIVE LA FRANCE!” written by M. Hamel with all his strength on the blackboard before the school was forced to teach only in German.
Indeed, clamping down on extremism requires strong reaction from the military, political, and security spheres. But as an indispensable precondition, culture and civilization should never lower their heads when faced with violence and threat. This is exactly the belief that we, the people who have been working toward cross-cultural exchanges and dialogues between civilizations, should uphold. As the renowned French director Luc Besson once said, “It costs 250 euros to buy a Kalashnikov but not even three euros to buy a pen – and your response can have a thousand times more impact.”