Chongqing Exhibition Links Foreign CPPCC Participation and Art

What changed

A Chongqing exhibition opened on November 5 linking foreign participation in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference with artwork by Chinese and international artists.

Held at the Chongqing CPPCC Museum of Culture and History, it brings together about 120 works, including painting, photography, mixed media and ink, under the theme “Different Perspectives, Shared Chongqing.” Around 60 foreign consular officials, business-association representatives and international students attended.

Why it matters

The exhibition makes cultural exchange concrete. Visitors are not only looking at Chongqing through paintings and photographs; they are also being shown how local consultation and public services work.

Participants visited Yubei Community in Liangjiang New Area, including a community dining hall, an elderly-care service station and a 24-hour gym. They also saw the “Chongqing Matters, Let’s Discuss” consultation site, where CPPCC members work with residents.

That combination is the event’s most telling feature. The artwork presents Chongqing as mountain, river, bridge and street life. The community visit presents it as a place where institutions try to solve everyday problems in public view. Together, they offer an image of the city built from both scenery and civic routines.

One participant, Park Yun-bon, who has lived in Chongqing for 10 years, contributed six photographs taken at Longmenhao Old Street, Xiahaoli Old Street and the Chongqing People’s Great Hall. Four show the city at night, with its mountains, rivers and bridges layered into the frame. His photograph of an intertwined huangge tree was meant to convey Chongqing’s rooted resilience.

The exhibition’s likely value lies in that personal detail. A city can promote itself with official descriptions, but six carefully chosen photographs reveal what one long-term foreign resident noticed after taking thousands of images. That perspective does not replace the official account of Chongqing; it gives the account texture.

The event also puts human contact alongside the current fascination with artificial intelligence. Spain’s consul general in Chengdu said the community visit showed how interaction between residents and CPPCC members remains a foundation of social governance. The exhibition’s longer-term policy effect is not established, but its immediate purpose is clear: use art and face-to-face encounters to make Chongqing’s institutions, culture and daily life more visible to people from outside China.