Volume 13, Issue 1

From a historical perspective, SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 have simultaneously led to known and previously unknown events as well. These seamlessly linked events can only be grasped with a new, integrative perspective of the relationship between culture and disease. Such a view requires a historiography that captures the full spectrum of an epidemic event, from the causes of emerging pathogens to their global spread and impact on different national, regional, and local communities. Integrative approaches to a global history of epidemics essentially include the following: –Understanding the dynamic relationship between nature and culture to empirically capture changes in local and regional biospheres and their interaction in global contexts.  –Investigating the culturally determined scientific and social negotiation processes that lead to the naming, characterization and communication of initially unknown causes of disease in relation to the culturally determined countermeasures that begin with their emergence. –Analysis of the effects of worldwide densification through new technical possibilities and new forms of globally organised production and the associated traffic of trade, transport and communication in historical perspective. These empirical approaches represent nodes in a seamless web of interacting factors. Such an approach necessarily has to bring together a wide range of disciplines and perspectives.

Since the 17th century, works translated into European languages about China such as the Jesuit reports have given rise to a misleading impression that China has only Confucian tradition. To some extent, Confucianism defines the cultural identity of traditional China, but it does not mean that Confucianism steered traditional Chinese culture into monoculturalism. The tradition of unity in diversity is the fundamental reason why Chinese culture has withstood the test of time. Cultural pluralism not only existed in the history, but it still has a subtle impact on Chinese society and Chinese people today. From the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220) to the modern age, Chinese culture has integrated elements of Buddhism, Christianity as well as Western science and social knowledge, which provided it with a potential of transformation and recreation. The author holds that it is this potential that empowers Chinese culture to meet the new challenges of Western modernity without cutting off its connection with the tradition.

The paper presents little-known information about a visit to China in 1959 of Stoyan Raynov—one of the founders of the modern Bulgarian ceramic art. Data from the personal archive of the artist is regarded as part of the bigger picture of the cultural and ideological exchange between Bulgaria and China in the 1950s. Focusing on two sites, visited by Stoyan Raynov during his time in Beijing—the new Beijing Railway Station and the Evergreen People’s Commune for Chinese-Bulgarian friendship, the paper presents the development of the commune into the 21st century, including the visit of Pat Nixon and most recently the birth of the town of Sijiqing—the modern successor of the preceding commune.