Before last night's panel discussion, the symposium kicked off with a culture fair held in Aidekman's Remis Sculpture Court.
Along with the panel, the show was sponsored by the Tufts Initiative for Global Leadership and International Perspective (TILIP), a subgroup of the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL).
"It's just a casual opening for the weekend's symposium," said Dickson Tsang, a junior at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, one of the four other universities involved in the program.
Tsang said that the lively song and dance festival served as a contrast to the more serious political lecture to follow.
The event aimed to provide a taste of Chinese and Indian culture, achieved primarily through the tasting of traditional food and the viewing of musical and dance performances from the two countries. The fair exhibited a wide array of Chinese and Indian cuisine, from naan to lo mein.
The cultural intermingling was interspersed with two Indian and two Chinese performances. Tufts' own Bhangra Team was among the performers.
These cultures are familiar to Tufts' TILIP students, most of whom traveled to China over the summer and to India this past winter break. There are about 12 Tufts students involved with the project, according to Tufts senior and TILIP member Jake Berliner.
These students now have the opportunity to share their cultural experiences with the Tufts community. "It's a cross-cultural collaboration," Tufts senior Jonathan Chan, another TILIP member, said, noting that the group aims to experience the two cultures in "ways that are academic as well as social."
-by Lilly Riber
