Speakers piece together stories of civilizations

Erik Nilsson, senior journalist, core member of the Edgar Snow Newsroom, China Daily

Exchanges and innovations bring diversity to the DNA of cultures that evolve, in every sense, like species that must adapt to changing environments or face extinction.

For example, in today's China, Spring Festival hongbao are still red envelopes containing cash — albeit they are increasingly digital packets containing digital currency sent by WeChat.

Indeed, exchanges are as crucial to intangible culture's conservation as corporeal technologies are to the preservation of physical specimens.

One way we can think about cultural exchanges is like the ancient Silk Road transported to today and then, through digital technologies, from today to the future — like a digital Belt and Road.

While few of the tangible cultural items, like silk and porcelain, that were traded among civilizations along the ancient Silk Road physically survive today, many of the intangible cultural products that moved along these trade routes psychically remain — be they religions or recipes, musical instruments or culinary ingredients, artistic styles or mathematical concepts.

No matter who you are or where you are on this planet, these cultural exchanges from long ago and far away have shaped your life since you were born and will continue to do so for your children, their children and those born after them.

For all of human history, so many peoples have spoken their own distinctive dialects in their respective regions.

But increasingly, all of humanity speaks to one another in a shared language of ones and zeroes, not only rewriting the cultural exchanges of today, globally, but also their legacies beyond tomorrow, for our world yet to come and for time immemorial.

While technology can enhance cultural exchanges and preservation... there will always remain value in meeting person-to-person, face-to-face and hand-in-hand to better see eye-to-eye. That is, the personal touch in every sense of the phrase, the value of which can never be fully replaced with any number of ones and zeroes.