Beijing: Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore has not only remained the most popular Indian in China but also among the most respected foreigners for over a century, but Swami Vivekananda (Swami) Vivekananda) has also made a significant mark here with his less-discussed China visit. This has been said in a documentary made on Swami Vivekananda’s visit to China.
Journalist Suvam Pal, working for a documentary on Vivekananda on a short trip to China and living in Beijing, told that in the year 1893, Swami Vivekananda traveled to Hong Kong and China’s busy port city of Canton under the then British rule. Which is now called Guangzhou. He told that Tagore traveled to China three times in his life and has a large number of fans here. Many have devoted their entire lives to learning Bengali and English to translate Tagore’s works.
Pal said that according to the survey conducted in 2009 on the occasion of 60 years of the establishment of Communist China, Tagore and India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru are among the top 50 foreign personalities who contributed most to China’s modern development. Speaking to PTI, he said, “The interesting fact is that few people know that Swami Vivekananda took a short stay in Hong Kong and spent three days there in June 1893.”
Pal said, “This happened during a trip to America to attend the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago and to deliver a historic speech on September 11, 1893.” He has recently released a micro-finance cum teaser for the Swami Vivekananda Culture Center (SVCC) and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) at the Indian Embassy in Beijing.
The Mandarin and English-language micro-documentary was released from the social media handle of SVCC on the anniversary of Chicago’s historic address. This four-minute micro-documentary incorporates information on Vivekananda’s nearly forgotten China trip, as well as his appreciation of Yath’s Chinese style, history and tradition. Swami Vivekananda is known as Bian Xi Fashi in Chinese language. Professor Wang Zhicheng at the University of Zhejiang in Hongzhu said, “Vivekanand is actually made up of two words vivek which is ‘bian’ in Chinese and anand which is ‘shi’ in Chinese.”
In the Chinese language, Fashi means Mahant. Significantly, Vivekananda started the journey from Gate Way of India, Mumbai on 31 May 1893 and reached Hong Kong’s Victoria Port in late June after a short stay in Colombo, Penang and Singapore. After a three-day stay in Hong Kong, he reached the Vancouver coast of Canada via Japan’s Nagasaki, Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, Kobe and Yokohama cities. He arrived in Chicago by road from the city of Vancouver, Canada.
