Where does creativity come from? Some experts say that creativity is personal talent, personal intelligence, and outcomes of personal individuality. In my opinion, certainly, these are important, as a person cannot be creative without any intelligence or individuality, however, does that mean creativity is just coming from intelligence or individuality? Can such kind of creativity lead to success? I am afraid that there should be some other factor, which is external, influenced by the environment and inspired by other culture.

Recently, an important subject in the center for cross-cultural studies of Peking University is “cultural belief”, and it means there is come edging contact between different cultures, which shows that cultural belief makes great space for our cultural creativity nowadays. For instance, between Chinese culture and western culture, there are differences and similarities, and how do they contact, communicate, integrate, and make new ideas from integration? All of these are one aspect of functions of cultural belief. Additionally, besides China and the West, we also have to think about how to combine the ancient culture and modern culture and interpret ancient civilization in the modern spirits. We never just broadcast the ancient civilization conservatively, and this phenomenon is serious, so we must interpret ancient culture in modern ways. We will see how it can be integrated and then become an essential part of the new world-culture for today’s world.

Well, apart from the above mentioned issues, it should be said that there are also many problems between mass culture and elite culture. In China, it was a great controversy for the mass culture and elite culture in quite a long time of the past. We can read the Chinese literature whose important development does come from the mass culture, such as our poems, poetry, vernacular novels and plays, all of them originated from the populace. However, there are a number of persons working on small culture look down upon the mass culture or popular literature and that is why so many unusual phenomena have taken place. Speeches on Confucian analects by Yu Dan caused so many doctors’ criticism. Honestly speaking, it is an extremely good phenomenon of such kind of people’s discussion. Thus this proves that many elite are self-important, they ignore common people’s needs and wants. Therefore there is still a great culture-belief to study between the mass culture and elite culture.

Moreover, there is another culture belief between natural science and humanity science. People who understand natural science do not understand humanity science any more, vice versa. How can science be combined with humanity spirits, especially our Chinese ancient and profound human spirits? How can our humanities scholar know more modern science and become mature? It’ is also a culture belief, and it is a problem of our views of religions. We approve and value our rational thought very much, Well, as to religious spirit belief, how can these two be combined, which is also a important subject to be discussed. Seeing today’s life Buddhism, for the phenomenon that hundreds of people get together, reciting Dao De Jing, people often conclude that we need this in our mass culture. Thus, we have to find out some creativity from the combination of rational thinking way and such kind of spirit believing way.

In addition, I think seeking for material culture is also a culture belief. For example, we can see the beautiful buildings, and this standard for material life should be joined with esthetic spirit. In China, we have very exquisite construction, and we also have very simple life styles free of charge. Therefore, so many culture beliefs are supposed to be a vital source of the creativity proposed today. For instance, the chief manager of “Song City”, Mr. Huang Qiaoling traveled many countries, collected several hundred thousand pictures, and then did a research on construction of Song little by little. Therefore, it is based on the international inspection foundation that he can come up with such an idea about Song City. A publication we are managing, three issues yearly, with the name Cross Cultural Dialogue, has got financial support from Song City in the past ten years as well as every issue’s publication expense. The publication has talked about China and Sweden, and especially focused on how Sweden's socialism democracy does, all kinds of their culture, and we also discussed whether the mental pain of today’s people is more severe or not compared to the past. We consulted many experts all over the world on this problem. Such as life, as to life history, we encourage experts to discuss how we regard life and death. Though these, I hope I can spread cross culture and knowledge inter-cultures to everybody, and inspire some creativities from everybody, and then creativities can be developed to an industry.

As a conclusion, where is creativity coming from? Perhaps from inter-culture, from the process of cross culture, especially in such a situation, we should pay attention to not only the elite culture but also the mass culture. For instance, the Center for Cross-cultural Studies organized a Far and near Collection, cooperating with Nanjing University. This book also talked about dreams, nights, emotions, and the views and simple explanations of different cultures on the above mentioned issues, so I think, such kind of cross cultural spread will be very helpful for cultural creativity.