"Germany and China - Moving Ahead Together" has been a three-year event series that will draw to a close during the Expo in Shanghai.

More than one million people have attended exhibitions, conferences, performances and festivals during the event series, which is under the patronage of German president Horst Kohler and Chinese president Hu Jintao.

Between the fall of 2007 and the fall of 2009, "Germany and China - Moving Ahead Together" made stops in five Chinese cities.

Under the main theme of sustainable urbanization, Chinese and German experts from politics, business, city planning and education worked on finding common solutions to global issues and, in dialogue with citizens, developed visions for modern life in large cities.

Expo 2010 is the sixth and last station. The program will present itself in the form of the "German-Chinese House" from May 1 until June 30. Inside the house an interactive city game will invite visitors to build their own city while exploring key themes about urbanization.

In the German Pavilion located just a few minutes away "Germany and China - Moving Ahead Together" will present lively examples of the German-Chinese exchanges. The accompanying program includes the "Urban Academy," where experts, scientists and artists will meet to exchange ideas, and a diverse cultural offering with German and Chinese contributions running the gamut from pop music to opera.

The house

This two-storey house is made of Julong bamboo. Bamboo is a fast-growing raw material and therefore particularly environmentally friendly. Artist Markus Heinsdorff linked this construction material, which has been used as a construction material for centuries in China, with modern technologies.

In doing so, he marries the traditional with high tech. He used eight-meter-long bamboo canes from South China for the house. With 330 sq m of walk-on area the house is not only environmentally friendly but also mobile - it can be completely dismantled and reassembled in another setting.

Interactive game

In the German-Chinese House an interactive game reveals the challenges of urbanization to visitors. In cooperation with the Peking Art Academy (CAFA), the RWTH Aachen, Germany's largest technical university, integrated the Chinese tradition of shadow play with modern computer technology.

In small groups, visitors step in front of a screen and see their moving and hopping shadows reflected on the wall. Intelligent software transforms the outlines of each body into houses, trees, electricity and water.

In real time, entire city quarters are created which grow together with each new group of visitors into an even larger city. At the end of the game, each group receives a code and can download "their" city block from the Internet.

The accompanying exhibition "Best Practices" gives visitors an insight into the different aspects of "Germany and China - Moving Ahead Together" that are important for sustainable urban development.

The Urban Academy

How does the city of the future look? What does sustainable urbanization mean? Chinese and Germany architects, scientists and artists will discuss these questions during workshops and conferences held by the Urban Academy. They will take place during the expo and end in September when there will be an exhibition in the Himalaya Museum about the best urbanization projects in China.

During the last three years, Chinese and Germans have learned more about each other through the event series. "Germany and China - Moving Ahead Together" has become a platform for sharing and exchanging ideas and information - for experts, artists, citizens, scientists, teachers and entrepreneurs across national, cultural and language boundaries. Today we realize more clearly than ever that only together can we master the challenges of the city of the future.

(China Daily 05/19/2010 page18)