（EMMA CHEN HOEFLER）

Profile of Chen Ping

(German name: Emma Chen Hoefler)

Born in Beijing, Professor Emma

Chen was migrated to Germany in 1997. Since 2007, she has been serving as Vice President of the International Organization of Folk Art (IOV), an official consultative agency of the UNESCO. She is the first high-level Chinese official of the IOV World in its over 40-year history and the only Chinese member of the German Committee for the International Council on Monuments and Sites（ICOMOS）, an important partner of the UNESCO. Before her migration to Germany, she was a reporter of Beijing Television. At the beginning of the 21stcentury, she was active in cultural activities in Germany as a columnist and publisher.

Over the past two decades, she has been actively promoting the cooperation and exchanges between international NGOs and the UNESCO, gives active play to the wisdom and strength of women, pools together and units NGO members from different countries and regions, is committed to the protection, exploration, sorting and communications of global cultural heritages, particularly the folk arts, and works hard to give assistance to the implementation of the UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage between regions and communities. She advocates that youths are a main force for carrying on cultural heritages, encourages intensive involvement of more youths for more orderly inheritance of cultural heritage, and considers that we should make more people realize the value and significance of cultural heritage.

As an overseas Chinese, she keeps making her voices heard for promoting Chinese cultures in the world, and actively creates opportunities and makes practices for Chinese cultures to “go global”. In 2016, she assisted China in gaining the status of guest of honor for the famous International Street Games Festival (TOCATI) in Italy, raised fund to organize a team consisting of more than 100 enthusiasts of Chinese folk sports such as Tai Chi, Chinese martial arts and waist drumming for performing and making cultural exchanges in Verona, attracting nearly 200,000 visitors from all over the world and reflecting the charm and effects of cultural exchanges for people-to-people connectivity.

As a Chinese living in Europe, she has successfully built a bridge for cultural exchanges and communication between the East and the West by fully leveraging her advantages of interpersonal connections and personal influence, actively responds to the “Belt and Road” initiative, and tells China’s stories and promotes Chinese cultures in western countries. As the tourism and culturalambassador of the Guizhou provincial government, since 2013, she has brought government officials, experts, scholars and craftspeople from nearly 100 countries to Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangdong, has taken part in the organization of the “International Folk Crafts and Cultural Products Expo” and “Lijiang National Folk Art Expo”, and brought various ethnic arts & crafts and folk songs and dances to many countries and cities. She organized and led art troupes from Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan and Shanxi to the United States, France, Brazil, Italy, and South Korea for participating in performance, promoting cultural exchanges between Chinese communities and their foreign counterparts, and enhancing the mutual understanding of ordinary people.

She has intensive involvement in academic events and art festivals to display the charm of Chinese cultures and has introduced her advanced experience in organizational management to different cities. She has been honored by the Folklore Association of the Czech Republic with “Award of Excellence” and by the European Union of Arts (EUA) with Golden European “European Award for Promoting Arts and Culture”. She is the first Chinese scholar to receive the Golden European “European Award for Promoting Arts and Culture”.

As a high-caliber talent, she has established the Research Academy of Cultural Heritage and Creative Industry at China’s Jinan University and serves as dean. The academy is an academic institution for integrating researches on cultural heritage and the creative industry, representing a very important innovation. She advocates that we should take appropriate measures to protect, inherit and fully leverage cultural heritages, which are valuable resources of mankind, and turn them into momentum and capital in the new era, create new value and benefit the homeland and later generations.

Emma is proficient in English and German. She has two children and pays great attention to the education of women and children, particularly the issue of helping craftswomen in underdeveloped countries and impoverished areas get rid of poverty and become rich. She hopes that more international organizations pay attention to and promote crafts people’s capabilities of innovation, self-improvement and survival. She considers that we should inherit traditional technologies, integrate modern advanced technologies, and use the Internet and high technologies to achieve professional transformation and improve the life of more craftspeople.