From Harmony to Integration: Hehe Culture in China-ASEAN Cultural Exchange
Editor's Note: This article is adapted from a speech delivered by Dato’ Goh Hin San, President of Han Culture Center Malaysia. It explores the concept of Hehe culture and its significance for China-ASEAN cooperation in cultural heritage and cultural exchange.
In my view, the concept of Hehe (和合) can provide a useful focus for China-ASEAN cooperation in cultural heritage. The term consists of two characters. He (和) stands for peace, while he (合) denotes integration. Together, they give us the idea of Hehe culture.
As one of the profound spiritual ideals within Chinese tradition, Hehe culture should serve as the guiding principle for collaborative efforts between China and ASEAN regarding cultural heritage. Why do I say this? We often refer to the well-known ideas of “harmony in diversity” and “seeking common ground while reserving differences”. These principles have influenced the thinking of more than 60 million overseas Chinese. On closer consideration, however, “harmony in diversity” still recognizes the existence of difference, just as “seeking common ground while reserving differences” still preserves differences. This raises a further question. If differences remain, how can we truly move toward a community with a shared future for humanity?
It is for this reason that the Han Culture Center Malaysia has long advocated developing these ideas further, as “seeking common ground while facilitating integration” and “harmony in shared celebration”. The former means building on what we share and moving further toward integration. The latter means recognizing and celebrating one another within harmony, while growing together.
Allow me to illustrate this with a concrete example. We once performed Journey to the West in Malay. If our approach had simply been “harmony in diversity” and “seeking common ground while reserving differences”, we might have presented Journey to the West in its original Chinese cultural form. Malaysian audiences might have enjoyed the performance, but the story would still have remained, in their eyes, part of someone else’s culture. What we did instead was to embrace the spirit of Hehe. The Monkey King was dressed in traditional Malay batik and practiced Malay martial arts, while the Earth Deity took on the local form of Datuk Gong. By weaving local elements into the story, the performance brought the two cultural traditions together. After watching the performance, Malaysian audiences felt that Journey to the West was no longer entirely foreign to them. It seemed, in a sense, to have become part of their own cultural heritage.
Therefore, I wish to underscore that Hehe culture must lie at the heart of China-ASEAN cooperation in cultural heritage.
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