【GYLD Talk】Bora Shnitman: Travel is Seeing the World Our Way

【GYLD Talk】Bora Shnitman: Travel is Seeing the World Our Way

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by asking a question. What was your favorite subject in school, something you were passionate about, and what impact it had on your life?

In September 2022, I had the privilege of being amongst the very first foreign students to study again in China. My studies of China started over a year before that, through a virtual exchange semester with Peking University. I loved my studies at Beida so much that I applied as well for my graduate studies there, specifically at the Yenching Academy, the program which brought me to China and here to you today.

When I was a teenager, I could look at the maps for a long time, learn about different countries and people, and the big country in the east always seem to be mysterious. One day I had my own little discovery. I found out that in the end of 16th century, approximately the same time, in two different places in the world, two world maps were created. One in Europe placed Jerusalem in the center of the world map. The second one in China, created by Mattel Ritchie and presented to Ming Emperor, placed China in the center of the world. And back then, I thought perhaps those two places are quite important and unique. And as I start to show more interest, I realize there’s so much more I don’t know.

In China, Israel is quite famous for its technology innovation, history. But in my school, we didn’t learn not much about China or East Asia. So to satisfy my curiosity, I decided to go and study about different countries, international relations, and especially about China. It was exciting to get to know the country’s history and culture and practice the Chinese characters and find similarities, but mostly differences. It was even more exciting to come and visit China after my graduation and to travel around this beautiful country. You’ll probably all agree that travel provides us an opportunity to communicate. For me personally, it’s a tool to understand the world we live in. Shaking handle from your friend, sharing meal with strangers, basically observing the world around us with our own eyes, using all our senses to connect to the environment we are in.

And this year, more than ever, we need those type of exchanges. We need to leverage the human and technological resources we have to create better connections. I’ve been working in tourism and culture industries for more than 15 years now. And recently I realize that perhaps one of my main life purposes is to help to narrow this gap between China and other countries, to introduce Chinese heritage to partners overseas, to communicate foreign cultural to the audience in China, and basically to create channels to tell the authentic story, to build trust and sympathy and to avoid hostility and judgment.

Many of you probably know that Jewish and Chinese people have quite a few things in common. Both people have a long history and have traditional cultural values. And we also actually share some modern similarities. Both Israelis and Chinese like to travel a lot, settle down in places far away from home, being entrepreneurs, have a sense of community and many more. And one of my favorite ones is curiosity. Since I’ve been in China, received many questions from Chinese friends and many times I couldn’t even answer them and also received many positive comments. And back then I thought maybe China is one of the best places in the world to be if you are Israeli.

In Israel, we also have a culture of asking questions, asking the right question, as you can imagine, we will lead to solution. And maybe that’s one of the reasons that Israel considered to be one of the most innovative countries in the world. During my work, I found out that many Chinese people, more and more Chinese people want to visit Israel to explore this country, to learn about its history and innovation. And both governments made great efforts to create favorable visa policies, open direct flights and basically showed willingness to connect.

And pandemic brought many challenges to our lives. And in my opinion, one of the major challenges was the distance it created between people. This year, we have an opportunity not only to reestablish this connection, but to make it stronger, to knock aside the differences and to build upon our similarities.

Now, remember the question I ask at the beginning about passion and subject. So imagine if that’s childhood passion of yours would make an impact not only on your life, but also on lives of others. What difference will it make?

Thank you.