Entrepreneur uses verse to strengthen ties with Iceland

Businessman Huang Nubo has become an unexpected cultural ambassador after he organized an annual poetry festival linking China and Iceland.

The Sino-Icelandic Poetry Festival, now in its third year, will be held in Norway in October, when leading poets, writers and critics from China and Scandinavia will gather to exchange their  work and experiences.

Huang, chairman of the Beijing-based Zhongkun Investment Group, donated $1 million to set up the Iceland-China Cultural Fund in 2010, from which $100,000 will be used to organize the poetry festival each year for a decade.

Huang said he launched the event because of his fondness for Iceland and his personal connection with Icelandic translator Hjorleifur Sveinbjornsson, his roommate when they studied together at the Chinese language and literature department of Peking University in the 1970s.

Sveinbjornsson is now chairman of the Iceland-China Cultural Fund.

"When Sveinbjornsson's mother knitted a woolen sweater for him, the lady also knitted one for me, as I was poor at that time. I felt grateful to the Icelandic people," Huang said.

He also loves the wild and barren landscape of the island nation. It enchants him and inspires his own poetry.

Poetry has been the successful entrepreneur's life passion since he started writing more than 40 years ago, after he was orphaned at the age of 13.

The first Sino-Icelandic Poetry Festival, which was held in Reykjavik in 2010, brought together about 30 poets and critics from the two nations and other Nordic countries, such as Finland and Sweden.

The second festival took place last year in Beijing and at Huangshan, in Anhui province.

The festival features seminars, panel discussions, poetry readings and talks.

"We have translated each poet's work, but they read their poems in their own language," Huang said.

"When you bring together individuals who have chosen to dedicate their lives to poetry, they not only understand each other in detail but they are happy, grateful and proud to find friends and partners from far away who understand the delicate, complicated and powerful nature of the poetry," said Sveinbjornsson.

Kristin Arnadottir, Iceland's ambassador to China, said she hoped Icelandic poems will become better known through more cultural exchange activities like the festival. Huang plans to hold the event again in Iceland in either 2013 or 2014.

"If the festival continues to be successful, I will continue to fund this cultural exchange once the $1 million are used up," Huang said.

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