Screenshot from Sina Weibo

 
China has invited ambassadors from more than 40 countries to China to introduce their nations’ popular specialties on a Hainan TV program, a move to further promote cultural exchanges between the country and the rest of the world.

The show was shot in South China’s Hainan Province, a southern tropical island province that has been transforming into a world-class free trade port with the help of the government, which enacted a law in June to promise an orderly flow of trade, investment, people, logistics and data. 

The free trade port plan, announced in June 2020, aims to build the province into a globally influential high-level free trade port by the middle of the century.

The newly wrapped TV program The World’s Specialty came into being under this plan. The show seeks to capture the attention of audiences with a new hook, having the ambassadors of each country to China introduce in person their national specialty products to audiences so they may better understand the world.

The program has brought in more than 40 ambassadors from countries including Egypt, Cape Verde, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uruguay, Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana, Colombia, Chile, and Pakistan to take part in the show.

The highly anticipated program is scheduled for release on Hainan TV after October 2021. Some pilots episodes aired in 2020.

In one pilot episode, the Uruguay ambassador to China introduced his country’s representative cuisine, steak, to viewers, saying proudly during the show that “milk plus steak is the secret to Uruguayan football going to the world.”

“China has been constantly innovating new diplomatic activities. I believe activities like these will become more and more popular. This [the TV program] will also make it easier for everyone to accept the cultural exchange,” Malaysian Ambassador to China Raja Datuk Nusirwan said during the pilot show.

“Very interactive way of doing a show. It will make people from different countries know each other more,” said Mohamed Badri, ambassador of the Arab Republic of Egypt to China, in 2020.

Global Times