Jilin book fair in Berlin, Germany [Photo/ chinajilin.com.cn]

China's Jilin province is putting on two special exhibitions in Cannes, France and Berlin, Germany, both of them movie capitals, as part of its "2015 China: Jilin Week" to spread its culture and traditions overseas, according to its online portal chinajilin.com.cn of July 7.

One exhibition has sketches of classical Chinese movie posters created by the province's Changchun Film Studio, China's oldest and most famous film center. The exhibitions take place in the Palais des Festival in Cannes and the Chinese Cultural Center in Berlin and show a half-century of glory in the Chinese film history and provide an opportunity for oriental film culture to meet western culture.

The posters are getting a lot of attention from western audiences, with one French woman remarking after visiting the show that she was amazed by the vivid paintings of film stories and was quite surprised to find that China had so many interesting movies. She, and many other visitors, also asked Chinese staff where they could get the film disks. The exhibit also aroused a bit of nostalgia among overseas Chinese, especially the elderly, who were moved to tears seeing the paintings.

The other exhibition is a book fair for the 70th anniversary of the Anti-Fascist War, with two featured works, "The Governance of China", by President Xi Jinping, in both French and German, and a collection of materials on the War of Resistance against the Japanese in Jilin province. One German university student said that the book by President Xi was the best way to understand contemporary China and its policies and development.

Other books concern Chinese history and culture, healthy diets, celebrity biographies, traditional herbs, tea, Jilin opera, historic Jilin figures, and Jilin folk customs and festivals. One young German who said he is going to work in China next month, said that the book fair brought him exactly what he needed for an introduction to China, and that he is hoping to visit Jilin.

When the fair finishes, all the remaining books will be given to university libraries in Berlin.