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Over 100 Gyeongju Choi clan descendants from South Korea gathered at the memorial hall of Choe Chiwon in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, to pay homage to their revered ancestor, hailed as a pioneer in fostering China-South Korea relations, on Oct 15, which marked China-South Korea Friendly Exchange Day in the city.
Gyeongju Choi clan descendants from South Korea gather at the memorial hall of Choe Chiwon in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, to commemorate their ancestor, on Oct 15. [Photo/yznews.cn]
More than 1,000 years ago, during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), Choe Chiwon (857-10th century) left his hometown Gyeongju to study in China, and later became an official of Yangzhou after passing an imperial examination.
Choe spent much of his tenure in Yangzhou at the Shugang-Slender West Lake scenic area, now home to the memorial hall in honor of him. He also composed the celebrated work Plowing the Cassia Grove with a Writing Brush, which has been passed down through generations and serves as a vital historical archive for research into the late Tang Dynasty.
Since 2001, the Gyeongju Choi clan's annual commemoration of Choe Chiwon in Yangzhou has become a cornerstone of friendly exchanges between the two cities.
Over the past two decades, "this millennium-old bond has continued to grow stronger through shared endeavors, deepening economic cooperation, cultural interaction, and people-to-people exchanges between Yangzhou and South Korea. May the consensus and goodwill we've forged here today become another bridge uniting the two nations and bringing about mutual progress," said a clan representative on Oct 15.
