Fair event's outreach: Storytelling goes across cultures

Skyscrapers, software and digital devices are similar across the globe. But while the world becomes more homogenized, there's an equally strong counter-force seeking the roots and characters of different cultures.

That force is so powerful that StoryDrive Asia, the Frankfurt Book Fair's all-media platform event that starts on May 28 in Beijing, has singled out cross-cultural storytelling - stories that shape us - for its 2014 theme.

"Everywhere we go, there is the unmistakable craving for stories from a foreign culture. All the while the world's getting globalized," says Holger Volland, vice-president of Frankfurt Book Fair.

That hunger is especially evident in the case of China.

"The need for Chinese stories is so palpable. It's true even in other Asian countries," Volland says.

Not just any Chinese stories, but ones that go to the extreme.

"For one, we're especially interested in understanding the country's old, traditional values, which are alien to us and therefore interesting and meaningful," Volland says.

To get China's time-honored wisdom across, StoryDrive is having Yu Dan, the Beijing Normal University scholar who studies and parses the Analects of Confucius, to share her way of translating the text from 2,500 years ago.

Yu has been known for her TV program about the ancient wisdom of Confucius in today's world and has had her works translated in more than 30 countries.