From October 20th to 21st, 2025, Mr. Soichiro Fukutake, honorary advisor of Belesheng Group of Japan, honorary chairman of the Fukutake Foundation, and chief planner of the Setouchi International Art Festival, visited Tsinghua Garden and conducted a two-day interactive exchange with Tsinghua teachers and students around the themes of culture and art, rural revitalization, and community building.
Visit to the Rural Revitalization Practice Base of Nanshan Village, Pinggu District, Beijing On October 20, Soichiro Fuwu and his entourage went to Nanshan Village, Nandulehe Town, Pinggu District, Beijing, to visit the rural revitalization practice base of the Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts and talk with the residents of the Academy of Fine Arts and local villagers.
On the morning of October 21, Soichiro Fukutake took Naoshima, the Belesheng Art Base, which he had carefully built for decades, as an example, and shared the theme of "Art Revitalization of Outlying Islands and Villages" at the Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts. From a depopulated "outlying island" to an art mecca that attracts the world, Naoshima and its surrounding islands have transformed beyond traditional community creation and are regarded as one of the most successful culturally driven regional revitalization models of our time.
Mr. Soichiro Fukutake decoded the underlying logic of this profound practice on the spot, and shared his thoughts on combining the experience of the "Naoshima model" with China's local context. He believes that there are four important measures to implement rural revitalization: select crops suitable for the local area, promote variety improvement, improve quality, and introduce intelligent agricultural technology; promote the "collective agriculture model" that promotes and supports each other with local agriculture; develop agricultural industrialization of primary production, secondary processing, and tertiary sales (using e-commerce network platforms); Build a rural revitalization college and carry out technical training to improve the level of farmers. Teachers and students asked questions and interacted with Soichiro Fukutake on issues such as how to achieve a win-win situation between cultural value and economic value and build an ecosystem where art, architecture, nature and community coexist.
On the afternoon of October 21, Soichiro Fukutake and his delegation visited the Social Innovation and Rural Revitalization Research Center of Tsinghua University of Public Management, listened to the introduction of the center's work on the basic theory, practical application and policy research carried out by the center, and held discussions and exchanges on topics such as the Sino-Japanese model of rural construction.
