China News Service, Beijing, March 7th: Title: Uruguayan sinologist Rovita: I am a "Chinese" foreigner
China News Service reporter Tan Xinzhang
In 1975, a Uruguayan boy came to China with his parents and started studying, working and living in China.
He said that his fate with China has lasted almost throughout his entire life so far.
He is the Uruguayan sinologist Pablo Rovetta.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with China News Service's "East-West Question" in Beijing, Rovita told the story of China's development and changes that he observed and felt as a witness.
Video: [East-West Question·Sinologist] Uruguayan Sinologist Rovita: I am a "Sinicized" foreigner
Source: China News Network
Uruguayans visit China eight times a year on average
Rovita's relationship with China began when he was a child. His father was a bookseller. In the 1960s, he founded Nativa Libros in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, which distributed and sold books in Uruguay and South America. Various Chinese books.
The young Lovita was first deeply attracted by the pictorials about China, including stories such as the Monkey King and Foolish Old Man Moving the Mountains, sights such as the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven, as well as scenes of rural life and agricultural production.
For Rovita, China on the other side of the world is both strange and interesting.
Gradually, after school or on Saturdays, he often went to his father's bookstore to read various books related to China with gusto, from pictorials to literary works. He read works by Lao She, Ba Jin and others, and saw Xu Beihong's paintings of horses and Qi Baishi's paintings. shrimp... His interest and affection for China are growing day by day.
In 2022, Rovita visited Beihai Park.
Photo provided by interviewee
In 1975, 17-year-old Rovita traveled to Beijing with her parents and sister.
Standing in Tiananmen Square for the first time, he said: "I have seen this place in a pictorial." When the scene in the pictorial really appeared in front of his eyes, Lovita had a more intuitive feeling: "Tiananmen Square is really big. . Someone told me that this square could accommodate 1 million people. At that time, the total population of Uruguay was less than 3 million, which means that it could accommodate one-third of the population of Uruguay.”
Rovita said: "I came to Beijing from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere, and from one of the farthest cities from Beijing. For me, everything I saw was new and interesting."
Since then, Rovita has lived in China for 20 years.
He learned to drink hot water in summer, eat popsicles in winter, ride a bicycle on the snow, etc.
In 1995, he went to Spain to live, but his fate with China has continued.
From 1995 to now, he has been to China more than 200 times, an average of about 8 times a year.
"I am probably the Uruguayan who has come to China the most," he said.
At the end of 2023, Luo Weita took photos in an alley near Houhai, Beijing.
Photo provided by interviewee
Witness China’s development and changes simultaneously with reform and opening up
"From the beginning of reform and opening up to now, I have seen changes in China and Chinese people in all aspects." Rovita said, "Without looking at economic statistics or reading analysts' comments, I have seen the significant improvement in people's living standards, In many aspects such as the modernization of national transportation, we can clearly feel the earth-shaking changes that have taken place in China. This is not a slogan, it is a fact that I have personally experienced."
On the eve of the Spring Festival this year, Rovita came to Beijing again and lamented the tremendous changes that have taken place in China.
He took travel as an example. When he first came to China, he was studying at Tsinghua University. At that time, if he wanted to go to the center of Beijing, there were only two ways to "get into the city" - riding a bicycle or taking a bus.
Now, the streets of Beijing are busy with traffic, and there are many electric cars on the road. They are more numerous and more modern than what he saw on the streets of Madrid, Spain.
He also mentioned, "In Beijing, if you go to the airport now, people will ask which airport to go to, because there are two international airports in Beijing."
Campus scenery of Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Photo by Wang Shanglin
Food is another point of interest for Rovita in China.
In his memory, in the 1970s, most Chinese people only had a sumptuous meal during festivals.
Now, as long as you want to eat delicious food, you can do it anytime and anywhere.
What makes Rovita happy is that more and more Latin American products are being served on Chinese tables and entering the daily lives of ordinary Chinese people.
He said: “The quality of life of the Chinese people has improved significantly, and the imported delicacies from all over the world are very rich. Now you can eat Uruguayan beef and drink Uruguayan wine in restaurants, which was unimaginable 50 years ago. There are also Chilean cars. Cherry, Peruvian blueberry, Mexican avocado..."
Not only that, but convenient mobile payment, accurate navigation and positioning, timely takeaway services, a brand-new Shougang Park, robots working in hotel lobbies... Rovita has seen and felt these changes with his own eyes.
He said: "If I don't come to China in the next five years, I won't dare to talk about what Chinese society is like by then, because there will definitely be many developments and changes that I can't imagine."
Shougang Park during the 2023 China International Fair for Trade in Services.
Photo by Guo Haipeng
Rovita said that by July 2025, it will be 50 years since he first came to China.
"Talking about the profound experiences I have had in China and the changes I have personally experienced in the past half century, I would probably have to write a very long book..."
"Every New Year's Eve, I must eat dumplings."
Rovita is accustomed to carrying a small notebook with him at all times. He writes down new things and novel words when he encounters them, or asks others to write them down for him.
"The longer I study China, the more I find that I can learn something new from China every day." He said that there is an old Chinese saying that "live until you are old, and you will always learn."
Every time he comes to China, he turns on the TV and watches the news, not only to practice Chinese, but also to learn many new words.
Rovita said with a smile: "The Chinese are very smart and may have foreseen the emergence of mobile phones in the world very early. Therefore, the Chinese can eat with one hand and express the numbers 1 to 10 with the other hand." He gestured with his hands and said, "This way, they can talk on the phone and eat at the same time, or they can gesture on the phone and figure the numbers at the same time."
Rovita likes Chinese culture because he has personally experienced many of the contents contained in it and has unusual emotions.
For example, he likes Chinese characters very much. The experience of studying at Tsinghua University is his most memorable experience. At that time, taking notes, studying texts, doing homework, taking exams, etc. all had to be in Chinese, and he still keeps the notebooks from that time; he gave an example , the first Spring Festival he spent after coming to China, he went to a Chinese friend’s house with his parents to learn how to make dumplings. From then on, every New Year’s Eve, no matter where he was, he must eat dumplings. “Even if I am alone, I will always eat dumplings.” Looking for a Chinese store to buy frozen dumplings."
In Rovita's view, although he is a foreigner, he has naturally absorbed many elements of Chinese culture through his experience of interacting with China for nearly half a century.
"In some respects, you can say that I am a 'Chinese' foreigner. In addition to being from Uruguay, my cultural background is also full of Chinese cultural elements."
Expert profile:
Pablo Rovetta is a Uruguayan sinologist and the founder of Uruguay's "Oriental Thoughts Network". He wrote the book "In China in the 1970s", which tells about the historical events he experienced in China as an eyewitness and participated in The collection of works "Selected Masterpieces of Modern Chinese Short Stories 1919-1949" and "Picking Pearls - Excellent Works of Short Stories" have been translated into Spanish for many Chinese literary works.