This is the short speech Karen Christensen gave at the literary panel in Dunhuang in May 2025, and two videos produced by the organizers – the China Writers Association and the Chinese Association for International Understanding – are available below:

It is a pleasure and honor to join a community focused on international understanding and on working together to make the world a better place. As a publisher, I have worked to help the world know more about China, and about environmental sustainability. We say that our mission is “Knowledge for our common future.” The Dialogue here in Dunhuang is so very relevant to the challenges we face together.

Because language is so important, I regret that I have not learned to speak Chinese. My son, however, speaks Mandarin fluently, and first began fascinated by China here in Dunhuang. We visited briefly in 2001, on our first trip to Asia. My son was 15 and my daughter 12, and they have vivid memories of this very special place.

Our connection with Dunhuang continued. This book [photo of This Fleeting World] by the Australian historian David Christian, was first published in English and then in Chinese. The title comes from lines in the Diamond Sutra, considered the world’s first printed book, and found in the Buddhist caves of Dunhuang. The lines we repeat inside the cover are:

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.*

When I first read these lines, they reminded me of Shakespeare’s poetry. Some people think they could come from the Bible. What a testimony to the power and universality of literature.

On Wednesday, traveling from New York, I had a long wait in the airport in Beijing. A Chinese woman approached me and asked if we could speak together in English. It turned out that she was a retired teacher, and a great reader. We talked about the authors she admires and the books she loves.

She told me how much she enjoys Dickens, and Hemingway. Then she told me about Chinese authors whose works she reads again and again.

We agreed that learning other languages and reading works from other cultures is a great pleasure because it gives us new windows on the world, and draws on our imagination and our sense of empathy.

I was reminded that the great world historian William H McNeill [photos – there are 3] used to talk about the importance of imagination, even in writing about history. To explore other times is similar to exploring other places and cultures. Books are an extraordinarily effective way to make the imaginative leaps and expand our international understanding.

Professor McNeill was known for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward. The Silk Road was, of course, one of the most important paths for this contact and exchange. By exchange, he meant ideas, and inventions like printing, and also practical, commercial exchange – trade relations, in fact. World historians are good at reminding us that global trade is not something new.

My own background is in literary studies, and as a writer I focus on community and environmental issues. My work in diverse fields has convinced me that imaginative writers, novelists and poets, and creative nonfiction writers, have an important role to play in international understanding. As I say to our readers, I hope that our books will explain what people like you, all over the world, have done and thought and felt, and how they faced the challenges of their time. With this knowledge, we can work together to shape a better future.