Open Landscape - Open Book: speech opening night Beijing International Book Fair
Staatssecretaris Halbe Zijlstra opende de Nederlandse presentatie van de 'Beijing International Book Fair' met een korte toespraak op de vooravond van de internationale opening.
• Your Royal Highness, ladies and gentlemen, it an honour for me to be here this evening to open the Dutch presentation at the Beijing International Book Fair.
• As host country, we have the opportunity to show the world that a small nation can make significant artistic contributions. And as State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science, I am pleased that to this end, our Chinese hosts have offered us such a wonderful stage.
• Some 30 Dutch writers, designers and comic-book artists have come to Beijing to represent our country at this event, which focuses on curiosity, flights of the imagination and the importance of art and literature. These artists together provide for the host-country programme, under the inspiring motto: Open Landscape – Open Book.
• This motto links up directly with the openness of the Dutch landscape and the openness of Dutch society. A society which is characterised by transparency, hospitality, tolerance for the views of others, freedom of speech and a culture of freedom of the press. The Dutch pavilion also sets itself apart through its design which has the same open, inviting character.
• That the Netherlands is host country is the result of long-lasting intense contact between the Nederlandse Letterenfonds (Dutch Foundation for Literature) and the Beijing International Book Fair, in which our country has been participating since 2004. In this period, many fruitful relationships with numerous Chinese publishers have blossomed.
• This host-country presentation may be regarded as the crowning achievement of increasingly more intensive interaction, but not as its end; it is rather a beginning. Because interest in Dutch literature continues to grow strongly among Chinese publishers.
• My Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Dutch Foundation for Literature in turn believe that it is very important that the works of Chinese writers are translated into Dutch so that they can be read in our country. We very much want to encourage this and that is why we have invited several Chinese authors to speak at the Manuscripta – Amsterdam Book Fair – on 4 and 5 September to an audience of Dutch readers and the press. A good thing because friendship and cooperation can never be a one-way street, love must flow in two directions.
• I believe it is a marvellous idea to start this Dutch presentation evening with a festive, literary-musical opening programme. Two writers, a poet, a pianist and a percussionist will allow you to sample what the Dutch arts have to offer in a performance that is part concert and part narration.
• The Netherlands is a flat country; if you stand on a thin book you can virtually see the whole country. But these artists prove that even a country with neither hills nor mountains can have high peaks – in its artistic landscape.
• I am looking forward to the presentation, and I am particularly curious about Han Bennink’s performance. Two years ago I saw and heard him when he had a spot on a Dutch national TV prime-time programme. He was able to make a table sound like a complete drum set and since then I have kept a special eye on him.
• Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you all an inspiring and fruitful Book Fair.
Thank you for your attention.