The picture shows the opening ceremony of the first Foreign Expert's Bookhouse in Shandong province. (COURTESY PHOTO)

By FU Ying

The first Foreign Expert's Bookhouse in China's Shandong province was inaugurated at Shandong University (SDU) on March 8. This initiative is established to further promote cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

With multilingual literature in the fields of politics, economics, social and natural science, and technologies, the Foreign Expert's Bookhouse is designed to communicate Chinese culture to international experts living and working in China so that they can better understand the country.

This initiative has been widely welcomed by foreign experts working in SDU. In an interview with Science and Technology Daily, Norman Schultz, a German teacher at the School of Foreign Languages and Literature said, the Bookhouse initiative will be an invaluable gathering place for people from different cultures to share ideas.

"It is an example of the openness and hospitality that characterize Chinese culture, and I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to engage with people from all walks of life in this welcoming environment," he said.

Abdelali Dadda, an associate professor at the School of Civil Engineering at SDU also regarded this move as a "smart idea" to make intercultural communication more accessible to diverse groups.