Vice-chairman of the standing committee of China’s National People’s Congress Wang Chen meets former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi on the sidelines of the Taihu World Cultural Forum, Oct 17, 2018. （Photo/China Daily）
Several notables attending the forum, such as Indian film star Aamir Khan and French Sinologist David Gosset, were also greeted by Wang.
On Wednesday, Prodi noted the importance of the forum introducing Chinese culture and also opening the nation to other cultures with different origins and roots.
"To be open, we'd better not only talk, but also listen," Prodi said at the conference's executive board meeting. He also expressed his worries over the difficulties the world is facing today, when mistrust among countries is all too widespread.
"Culture is changing," he continued. "But we have to find how to interpret the meaning of culture in the context of the 21st century… We need to better translate our own cultures and have them better understood and received by others."
The Taihu World Cultural Forum, named for Taihu Lake in the Yangtze River Delta, was created in 2008.
The inaugural conference was held in 2011 in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, by the lake, and was followed by meetings in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, and in Shanghai and Macao.
