One of this days the City Executive Committee of Kamyanets-Podilsky received an email from Liuzhou, a district administrative center in Guangxi province. The authors of the letter requested permission from the city fathers of this old Ukrainian city to send a delegation of ten traditional Chinese musicians to take part in the local Seven Cultures festival. The conditions of the international event scheduled for May envision that representatives of nations that lived or live in Kamyanets-Podilsky participate in the Seven Cultures. “Those are Poles, Jews, Russians, Armenians, etc. And we had never had any Chinese living in our city,” head of the organization and control department of the City Executive Committee Valery Klymenko told The Day. However, they were impressed with the reference materials about Liuzhou attached to the message: its annual GDP reaches $21.5 billion. Up to a million tourists visit the Chinese city every year. The picturesque Kamyanets-Podilsky, while so rich in monuments of history, culture, and architecture, can only dream of such material wealth. Liuzhou has 28 twin cities in fifteen countries. “Maybe they intend to make Kamyanets-Podilsky their twin city too,” Mr. Klymenko suggested. This is why city authorities treated the request favorably. They also took into consideration the fact that among the million of Liuzhou’s guests there also were Kamyanets-Podilsky residents who from time to time travel to China and other countries to purchase wholesale goods, making their contribution to Ukraine’s GDP. And this May they will enjoy an opportunity to listen to Chinese melodies both well-known and unknown to them, reports Mykhailo VASYLEVSKY, The Day.
